Historical Archives - London Korean Film Festival

The Admiral: Roaring Currents

admin — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 06:48:10 +0000

First instalment in writer-director Kim Han-min’s historic epic trilogy, The Admiral: Roaring Currents is based on the historical Battle of Myeongnyang and its star naval admiral Yi Sun-sin (Choi Min-sik) who led a small fleet to improbable victory over a much larger Japanese fleet.

Imprisoned and tortured for failing to neutralise a Japanese double-agent in his ranks, Yi Sun-sin is recalled to his post when a second invasion from Japan appeared imminent in 1597. Dealing with a severely reduced naval force consisting of an estimated 12 warships following the fleet’s near-devastation during a major battle while he was imprisoned, Yi has scant time to rally his sailors, prepare his battleships and devise a defence against a Japanese fleet of more than 300.

The film recorded 10 million admissions only 12 days after its premiere and set a record in Korea for achieving such a high number of viewers in the shortest amount of time. The movie also surpassed Avatar’s record of 13 million viewers to become the most-watched and highest-grossing film of all time in Korea with 17.6 million admissions.

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The Surrogate Woman

admin — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 17:26:13 +0000

Shin Sang-gyu has a problem: he is the last male heir in his branch of the Shin clan, and despite the close relationship with a beautiful and still young wife, they have no children, no son to carry on the family line. Uncle and grandmother confer and decide to seek out a surrogate from a village of women known for providing such ‘borrowed wombs’. Ong-nyeo, only seventeen, is chosen for the role. When passion carries her and Sang-gyu well outside the limits prescribed by Confucian family duties, the result will prove lethal.

Im Kwon-taek had the confidence and wisdom to make Kang Soo-yeon his Ong-nyeo, The role was the most significant one of her career: it allowed her to shed the image of cheerful, sparky girl/teenager and become the most remarkable actor of the next decade and a half. While the film was not a success at first release, that changed dramatically when the Venice film festival awarded her Best Actress for 1987–the first international film star of Korea.

Mark Morris

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The Book of Fish

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 13:00:26 +0000

Exiled to Black Mountain Island for his revolutionary ideas, scholar Chung Yak-jeon (Sul Kyung-gu, a regular from the films of Lee Chang-dong) forms a close, reciprocal bond with local young fisherman Chang-dae (Byun Yo-han), with whom he collaborates on an encyclopaedic, apparently apolitical book about the island’s marine life. The interactions between these two very different men offer a dialectic about divisions (of class, gender, religion and politics) during the early nineteenth century from which modern Korea would be forged, even as the island, at first an undesirable backwater ‘boondocks’, is soon revealed, under the wise influence of its new resident, to be a social utopia, and a model mini-state.

In this mostly monochrome epic drama, Lee Joon-ik (director of Sunny, 2008; The Throne, 2015; Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet, 2016) brings a beautiful, often bawdy collision of high ideals and harsh realities.

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