The Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) was originally founded in 1984 in a small classroom inside the Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation, predecessor to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). This has allowed it to flourish in a location very close to the Korean film industry, and for 40 years it has served as an educational venue for discovering and amplifying the Korean film landscape̵...
KOREA SEASON – DISABILITY IN KOREAN CINEMA
All around the world, the spectrum of film themes and film forms that portray impairments continues to expand. Disabled actors are increasingly being cast in roles as disabled characters, and we are also seeing growing diversity in the types of impairments portrayed in these films and stories. In the 2022 film The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to Se...
KOREA SEASON – INDIE TALENT
Korean independent filmmakers continue to turn out an impressive number of new features every year, despite a lingering downturn at Korea’s box office and cuts to public funding. With surprising regularity, large numbers of talented new directors emerge and make names for themselves each year. The Indie Talent strand is devoted to highlighting such new voices, ...
The six films introduced in the Women’s Voices programme of the London Korean Film Festival illuminate the theme of “women in relationships,” using diverse formats to explore the various difficulties women face in their interpersonal interactions. These difficulties are strongly rooted in reality, which can invoke a sense of frustration, but through the deep concerns and numer...
As the strand devoted to contemporary Korean film, Cinema Now surfs the Zeitgeist and rides the Hallyu’s crest, capturing the present in cross-section. This synchronic approach to a national cinema ensures two things in conflict: continuity, and novelty. For while the strand’s selection represents the cutting edge and the (roaring) current of Korean cinema today, the discoveries at that coalfac...