The Korean Cultural Centre UK is proud to welcome you back to this year’s documentary strand of our Korean Film Nights, a year-round programme of film screenings and discussions. Following on from 2022’s theme Living Memories, which focused on preserving memories and the truth through documentary, we continue to investigate the documentary form with our new season Labour(s) of Love, curated by MA film students from Birkbeck, University of London. By examining the lives of workers whose labour shapes the fabric of the world we live in, the meaning of ‘labour’ will be shown to inhabit life-structuring activities that promote community, passion, love, and not just arduous handiwork.
This selection considers documentary as a tool that can galvanise labourers into unionising while revering them for their often under-looked roles in defining modern society. By inspecting the individual acts of passion that go into each documented act of labour, the films propose that labour is often inseparable from an act of love as we witness how the workers’ambitions transform the world around us. These passionate pursuits range from the celebration of an architect’s life-long vision to the work that is put into forging long-term loving relationships. The eclectic mix of work presented in the series not only celebrates how labour works as a guiding principle in our lives but offers suggestions into how labour should be regulated under political systems to respect the livelihoods of the labourers in question.
We begin our programme by looking at labour in its most distilled form with Kim Jeong-keun’s Underground (2019). The film provides a detailed account of what goes into upkeeping a successful metropolitan subway system by following the metro workers of Busan. Through hypnotic sequences of labour in action, and fly-on-the-wall accounts of the behind the scenes bureaucracy, the audience comes to understand the intricate marvel that is the metro system while developing an understanding of why metro workers have to strike to defend their rights.
While Underground is a holistic look at labour under the banner of a large organisation, the core of our program focuses on microcosmic variations of labour with Jeong Jae-eun’s Talking Architect (2012) and Kwon Woo-jung’s Earth’s Women (2010). Talking Architect follows the free-spirited architect Chung Gu-yon in the days leading up to an exhibition celebrating his life work. Jeong’s gentle observations present Gu-yon with the opportunity to elaborate upon the artistic process that guides his work and reveals how an artist’s genuine love of their craft can develop the world around them, and the frustrations that can develop when corporate greed holds his chosen art form hostage.
Continuing the pursuit of personal labours of love, Earth’s Women concerns itself with the lives of three women with lifelong interests in agriculture. Through the labour of these salt of the earth farmers, the significance of labour’s importance in upkeeping our daily existence becomes apparent. Like with many people, the work for these women does not end at 5 o’clock: labour’s day-long hold is documented via the political activism and care work of the women; they are defined not by a singular form of labour, but the labour that occurs around them and provides self-fulfilment all year-round.
After seeing labour manifested in various guises, the programme culminates by considering it in its most abstract form: labour as an act of love and compassion. Jin Mo-young’s My Love, Don’t Cross That River (2014) reveals that the prior acts of labour (infrastructure, architecture, and farming) are necessary in permitting a seventy year relationship between two people to blossom healthily. The lifelong commitment between an elderly married couple is put under tender examination as Jin documents in devastating detail the care Kang Kye-yeol puts into supporting her dying nonagenarian husband. Although the subject matter is forlorn, Kye-yeol’s arduous labour reveals a lifetime commitment to loving, and the long shots of her labour sublimate the quotidian activities of her life. The couple’s story, and the rest of Labour(s) of Love, invites you to deliberate upon the role of labour in your life and the world around you.
Kat Haylett, Harry Bayley, Marcus Munroe, Raquel Morais, & Tyia Burnett
Discover the life and work of the “Godfather of Video Art” in Amanda Kim’s Sundance hit Nam June Paik: Moon Is The Oldest TV.
Featuring exclusive archive footage, interviews with Paik’s closest collaborators & contemporaries and narration by Steven Yeun, #NamJunePaikFilm chronicles Paik’s video art revolution.
Watch it in cinemas from 19 May. Book tickets now: namjunepaik.film
Synopsis Often referred to as the “”Godfather ofVideo Art””, Nam June Paik was one of the founding fathers of avant–garde art in the 20th century and arguably the most famous Korean contemporary artist. For the first time, debut filmmaker Amanda Kim profiles his art and life, telling the story of Paik’smeteoric rise in the New York art scene and his Nostradamus–like visions of a future in which “everybody will have his own TV channel”. Featuring an extensive archive of performance footage, original interviews from Paik’s contemporaries and collaborators, and a voiceover narration of Nam June Paik’s writings read by Executive Producer Steven Yeun (Minari, Nope), NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV is a timely meditation on the contradictory ways in which technology elicits both fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding.
★★★★ “Electric, powerful, soul-searching” — Little White Lies
After screening at London Korean Film Festival 2022, Davy Chou’s highly acclaimed Return to Seoul screens in cinemas nationwide from Friday 5 May.
Featuring a staggering performance by newcomer Park Ji-Min, Return to Seoul follows a free-spirited 25-year-old adoptee who returns to South Korea to find her biological parents. Profound and bittersweet, the film is a refreshingly authentic story of a young woman’s search for identity.
In collaboration with The Korean Film Archive (KOFA), The Korean Cultural Centre UK welcomes you in 2023 to Korean Film Nights, our year-round programme of film screenings and talks. We are pleased to share films under the theme of Seoul on Screen.
The collection of “Seoul on Screen” is composed of six films that problematize the space and place of Seoul. Although the meaning and representation methods given to Seoul are different, they have one thing in common: each film vividly captures the actual places of Seoul as its main background. Arranged by the times, the films contain Seoul in six periods: 1956, a time led by the vision of American democracy; 1966, when migrants moved to Seoul at their peak; 1973, when urban development was in full swing; 1994, when globalization emerged as a guideline; 1987, looking back on the year 1994; 2008, the post-IMF era; and 2011, the contemporary era that requires a change of thinking.
Holiday in Seoul (dir. LEE Yong-min. 1956)is a film that estimates Seoul’s postwar cultural landscape. It is a comedy genre film that went into production in earnest after the war and contains various spaces ranging from downtown Seoul to its surrounding areas. Historian SUK Ji-hun guides us through Seoul’s various urban spaces this film captures in a “strolling” manner. This essay also emphasizes that the film is a vivid record of the various leisure activities and urban culture of Seoul’s middle and upper classes and conveys its meaning.
Let’s Meet at Walkerhill (dir. HAN Hyeong-mo, 1966) is a musical comedy set in Seoul in the mid-1960s. Through the eyes of people who come to Seoul from the countryside in search of a daughter or a lover, the film records the rapid change of Seoul into a modern city. KIM Young-Joon, an urban researcher, pays attention to the outstanding historical value of this colour film, which depicts Seoul at the time of urban development, as a piece of urban history. Following the movement of the characters, KIM Young-joon meticulously points out every nook and cranny of Seoul captured in multiple ways, which are different from the national gaze.
Night Journey (dir.KIM Soo-yong, 1977) is a film set in Seoul in the 1970s, when the city’s exterior began to take shape as that of a modern city. Film scholar PARK Yu-hee points out that, although Seoul’s approach to an advanced city is displayed and the life of city dwellers living according to a standardized time is depicted, there is no realistic probability in this film. PARK Yu-hee reveals the envy of European modernist films held by Night Journey and the audience’s interest in stars for that reason and argues about the meaning of Seoul grasped through these lenses.
Rosy Life (dir.KIM Hong-joon, 1994) is a film set in Garibong-dong, a suburb of Seoul in 1987. Film scholar OH Young-suk notes that the Guro Industrial Complex and factory workers, which should appear in films set in Garibong, do not appear at all in this film; instead, a late-night manga cafe where people, in their situation close to being “homeless,” stay is the main stage. From her point of view, Seoul, newly discovered through the eyes of the urban poor and the people who defected from the mainstream, functions not only as an opportunity to rethink the protagonists of social change in the 1980s but also reveals concerns about the coordinates of “globalization” presented by the state as a new vision in the 1990s.
My Dear Enemy (dir.LEE Yoon-ki, 2008) is a kind of road movie that captures various locations in Seoul along the one-day journey of a reunited ex-couple. Film scholar HAN Young-hyeon refers to the dual aspect of Seoul realized on the screen while paying attention to the post IMF era that this film portrays. It is a place where the instability and sense of crisis of Korean society that faced the 2008 global financial crisis is visualized; at the same time, it conveys the process and meaning of Seoul as a romantic space where one can escape from the harsh reality of capitalism.
The Day He Arrives (dir.HONG Sang-soo, 2011) is a film about a series of events happening to a man who stays for a few days in Bukchon, Seoul, which retains the appearance of an old neighbourhood. It was filmed in Bukchon, and the film seems to represent Bukchon in quite a realistic way in that names of places and businesses are captured as they were. Film critic JANG Byoung-won, however, contends that Bukchon captured in this film is rather described on a map of the mind. Bukchon, caught in the eyes of HONG Sang-soo, is a stage full of personality where the adventure of the mind takes place to reject the subsumption into a single system and escape the circulating orbit.
The films featured in the collection provide different perspectives and meanings of Seoul. These films show that people’s understanding of how a city’s infrastructure works changes over time and place. There are also various ways of problematizing Seoul. Although there are differences in the way and intentions of each film intervene in the space of Seoul, these deviations, on the contrary, provide an opportunity to realize the long history of Korean cinema that has grown in close interaction with Seoul.
Through this selection of films, one will glimpse the changes in the symbolism that Seoul has occupied from the postwar period to the contemporaneous period as well as a glimpse at the trends of Korean cinema that have been in rapid change, which corresponds to the changes of the time.
OH Young-suk, HK Research Professor at Institute for East Asian Studies at Sungkonghoe University
The outstanding new film from acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) – BROKER will be in cinemas across the UK from 24 Feb! So-young (K-Pop star Lee ‘IU’ Ji-eun) leaves her baby Woo-sung outside a church ‘baby box’, only to find that he’s been picked up by Sang-hyun (Parasite’s Song Kang-ho), who runs an unofficial adoption brokerage and plans to find him a new home. It’s a heartwarming, funny and moving story of hope and family that must be seen on the big screen. Find out more at www.broker.film
The four films included in this year’s Indie Talent section were chosen to provide a glimpse into the kind of stories Korean independent filmmakers are telling in the present day. Whereas many commercial filmmakers have to assess and anticipate the type of stories audiences want to hear, for independent directors the choice of what story to tell often comes from someplace personal. In that sense, there is an intimacy to Korean independent films that distinguishes them from their bigger-budget brethren. These works invite us into the filmmaker’s mind, where we can share his or her concerns. At the same time, taken together these films illustrate various issues that are relevant to society as a whole.
Those concerns range in breadth from the base to the very tip of Maslow’s famous ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. A film like Oh Seong-ho’s Through My Midwinter illustrates a situation that is sadly common among those in their twenties in contemporary Korea: dreams of self-actualization (the top levels of Maslow’s pyramid) and even personal relationships (the middle levels) are threatened when basic economic and physiological needs come under pressure. The film’s sympathetic but clear-eyed portrayal of a struggling young couple has resonated strongly with many viewers. Financial trouble and struggles with debt are widespread in contemporary Korean society, and the waning of the pandemic has done little to alleviate this. Park Song-yeol and Won Hyang-ra’s brilliant Hot in Day, Cold at Night also covers similar subject matter, but adopts a completely different tone, using lacerating humour to depict the lives of a jobless husband and wife who are pushed into making some desperate choices.
Moving up the pyramid, family relationships have been an enduring theme for Korean independent filmmakers over the years, serving as the focus of acclaimed films like The World of Us (2016) and Moving On (2019). The Hill of Secrets by Lee Ji-eun continues this tradition but approaches it from a fresh perspective, considering the tangled threads that bind together family, pride and ambition. A look at the Korean independent films of the past year reveals many examples of stories structured around a parent-child relationship. This is hardly unique to Korean cinema, but it does show how the ways in which families communicate and rely on each other continue to evolve with each subsequent generation.
Kim Mi-young’s A Lonely Island in the Distant Seaalso has a father-daughter relationship at its centre, but it might be more accurate to describe it as the parallel journeys of two people quietly searching for meaning and contentment in life. In many ways this is more about what they choose to give up, than about what they strive to achieve. More broadly, after a decades-long concentration on economic growth, Korean society is more frequently turning to questions related to fulfilment and meaning in daily life. These are questions with no easy answers, but independent films like this one are opening up new conversations, and telling stories that the mainstream industry may have overlooked.
We lead growing proportions of our lives online, and this is even more true for young people, who face the daunting task of exploring their sexuality and relationships in an increasingly digital world. Lawmakers and the government in South Korea are way behind in understanding how to prevent and respond to gender-based violence using tech and in online spaces. It’s past time for them to catch up.
In her book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, subtitled ‘Women and Desire in the Age of Consent’, Katherine Angel debates the current situation of the past few years, especially since Me Too, in which ‘consent’ and ‘self-knowledge’ have become more important to women than anything else when it comes to sex. Unlike the 1960s and 70s in the West, and Korea in the 1990s, during which ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’ were keywords, contemporary feminism is much more associated with hurt and violence. In other words, modern feminists don’t have space for desire and exploration of desire, and instead prioritise ‘safety’ and ‘transparency’. In particular, Korea’s notorious illegal filming (otherwise known as ‘Molka’) and revenge porn have become the key agenda for the country’s younger generation of feminists. That the primary concern of the ‘Hyehwa Station Feminist Protests’ – which played one of the central roles in young feminists’ self-identification and social realisation – was an insistence on a fair and impartial investigation of Molka, is proof of this.
Gyeong-ah’s Daughter captures this relationship between the sexuality and daily lives of 2020s’ young Korean women. The methods through which male violence has long since operated have gained greater destructive influence with the infiltration of digital technology, where the intimate time and space between lovers is no longer safe. When it comes to sex (and digital photography), women’s consent and self-knowledge is constantly brought into question, and women end up punishing themselves. The film depicts in detail how both the freedom and insecurity of sex and independence present an even greater threat to women’s lives with the introduction of digital technology. As the film’s title would suggest, not only is the digital sex crime victim, Yeon-su, important, but also her mother, Gyeong-ah, as well as the relationship between the two women. Through the mother’s perspective , the film reveals how women’s lives are an endless string of turmoil and hurt in the space between freedom and safety, and that this was the same even before Me Too. On one hand, the film is a thoughtful consideration of the complex gender-based aspects of the ‘intimacy’ demanded of care worker Gyeong-ah and teacher Yeon-su (both of whose careers are considered ‘women’s professions’ in Korea). On the other hand, Gyeong-ah’s Daughter shows us in detail the dual-natured and complex aspects of the power and relationships that modern Korean women come up against.
Meanwhile, sexuality has become the centre of debate in Korean society through yet other means related to equality and discrimination. In 2007, Korea was on the verge of bringing in a historical ‘anti-discrimination law’. However, when the Ministry of Justice announced the upcoming legislation, they removed ‘sexuality’ from the anti-discrimination item, and following opposition from countless citizens and activists, the ‘ruined’ anti-discrimination law was not passed. Since then, there has been a push across society for the enactment of an ‘inclusive’ anti-discrimination law that incorporates sexuality, but entrenched homophobia has prevented this from happening. Coming to You – a documentary that tells of two ‘mums’ who, after their children’s coming-out, join the ‘Queer Children’s Parents Club’, and undergo self-transformation – captures scenes surrounding sexuality in Korean society. The film was produced by ‘PINKS’, a collective making documentaries tackling discrimination and injustice within Korean society, and director Byun Gyu-ri has said in multiple interviews that the biggest motivation for the film was to help bring about the enactment of an anti-discrimination law. Though Coming to You places the Queer Children’s Parents Club at the fore, what it considers most important (as the film’s opening proves) is giving voice to the minoritized individuals who have been rendered invisible all across society. I hope that audiences, much like the parents in the film, regardless of whether or not they are able to welcome the ‘coming’ out of these individuals, might experience a gradual change and become allies supporting minorities. In 2021, the anti-discrimination law once again failed to pass, and while the institutionalisation of anti-discrimination in Korea remains far off, Coming to You is a simple but tremendous ray of hope.
Hwang Miyojo, Seoul International Women’s Film Festival Programmer
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THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ITS PROGRAMME
Special Presentation of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Award Winning BROKER
Critically Acclaimed RETURN TO SEOUL
Closing Film: KIM Han-min’s HANSAN: RISING DRAGON
Following the announcement of Choi Dong-hoon’sAlienoid opening the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF), the festival is proud to reveal its 2022 programme filled with critically acclaimed films, exciting new talent, Korean box office hits, the latest K-Horror films, powerful female filmmakers and boundary pushing documentaries. The world’s longest running film festival dedicated to Korean cinema, runs from 3 November – 17 November 2022 in cinema venues across London.
With the biggest programme dedicated to Korean cinema outside of the country itself, the exciting programme includes 35+ films across strands including Cinema Now, Special Focus, After Dark: K-Horror, Indie Talents, Women’s Voices, Documentary, Shorts and Artist Video.
Kim Han-min’s follow up to The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014), the naval warfare blockbuster that remains the most successful Korean film of all time,Hansan: Rising Dragon closes the festival on 17th November at Regent St Cinema. The gala screening is followed by a Q&A with Kim Han-min. The prequel returns to the legendary exploits of Joseon Era admiral Yi Sun-sin and, teeming white knuckle tension, steers us through an impeccably realized and epic David-vs-Goliath struggle out in the open sea. The Admiral: Roaring Currentsalso features as a Special Screening earlier in the programme.
As part of the LKFF collaboration with the V&A exhibition Hallyu! The Korean Wave, Choi Dong-hoon’s crime caper, The Thieves features in the special screening programme. One of the region’s largest co-productions with a fantastic Korean and Hong Kong ensemble cast, including Squid Game’s Lee jung-jae, and a gripping high impact caper story, The Thievesis one of the biggest grossing films in Korea’s box office history. The special screening is followed by a Q&A with Choi Dong-hoon and a reception at the V&A.
Among the Special screenings is Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Award Winning Broker – one of the year’s most highly acclaimed films, The whimsical and beautifully crafted film played in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and won Song Kang-ho (Parasite, The Host) a Best Actor award at Cannes – making history as the first Korean actor to do so. The screening is followed by a Q&A with the film’s translator Darcy Paquet.
Cinema Now offers an exciting range of films from the past year, the very latest in Korean cinema. Jeong Ji-yeon’s mesmerizing psychological thriller The Anchor plays out its genre tropes to dizzying perfection, while also addressing the inequalities and traumas which women both face and hand down in Korean society. The screening is followed by a Q&A with Jeong Ji-yeon at Picturehouse Central. In the riveting Return To Seoul, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival under the Un Certain Regard section, director Davy Chou centers on a woman searching for her identity, inspired by the real life experience of Chou’s friend. The protagonist is played by Park Ji-min in a critically acclaimed breakthrough performance. Byun Sung-hyun’sKingmaker is a saga of aspiration and ambition set during the dictatorship era of 1963-1979 and is powered by two excellent performances by Sul Kyung-gu(The Book of fish) and Lee Sun-kyun(Parasite). Hot Blooded is the long awaited directorial debut by acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Cheon Myeong-kwan and is a norish tale on the tribulations of a gangster in a multi-layered performance by Jung Woo. In Stellar: A Magical Ride, director Kwon Soo-kyung embarks on a comedic road chase fueled with nostalgia and charm. Romance gets a second chance in Director’s Intention by Kim Min-geun with a location scout and a film director taking a trip down memory lane.
LKFF presents a widely and feverishly appreciated genre, rooted in psychological and emotional reality, with its After Dark: K-Horror strand. Park Kang’s intense, ambiguous feature Seire(the 3 week confinement period for mother and newborn) is a subtle, serious, slow-burn exposé of one man’s inner psyche, both waking and dreaming. Drawing liberally (if dynamically) on both Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale Of Two Sisters, Contorted by Kang Dong-hun places a child in harrowing peril and concerns a house and a family both haunted where mental illness and domestic history merge into one. Set in a community centre where a mass murder took place, Guimoon: The Lightless Door involves a paranormal investigator who discovers a door to another world in a wild, bewildering and increasing frantic ghost train of a ride by Sim Deok-geun. The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra by Park Sye-young is a melancholic, monstrous, experimental horror dealing with a creature’s need to feed but also sets human drama and dreams against an irrational canvas of nature. Park’s short film Cashbag is programmed alongside and follows a man in a series of nocturnal transactions ending always in a similar waterside location.
Female filmmakers and talent continue to be front and center of the festival in the dedicated Women’s Voices strand. A Women’s Voices networking event launches the strand ahead of the screening of Kim Jung-eun’s Gyeong-ah’s Daughter on 13th November. The screening is followed by a Q&A with Kim Jung-eun at Cine Lumiere . Other powerful and thought provoking titles within the strand include Byun Gyu-ri’s Coming To You on two mothers coming to terms with their children’s sexuality and join the ‘Queer Children’s Parents Club’. In collaboration with the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, the following films have been selected: Bae Cyan’s auto-fiction documentary Dear Chaemin, which examines violence against queer communities in Seoul and among Asian communities in Europe; Yang Yoon-jung’s school drama Special Scholarship which deals with fierce politics among students of different demographics; Jeon Chae-lin’s Dear Kimsisters in 1959 that takes a look at the impact and influence of the popular The Kim Sisters female pop group at the height of the Cold War and the provocative Nipple War 3 by Paek Siwon sets out to question Korean society’s views on women’s bodies.
The programme includes a Special Focus strand dedicated to internationally celebrated, acclaimed actress Kang Soo-yeon. Beloved within Korea as a young actor, Kang became well known on the international stage with her breakout role in Im Kwon-taek’s The Surrogate Woman in 1987. Kang won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 44th Venice International Film Festival for her role, making her the first Korean actor to receive an award at a major international film festival. Considered a national treasure, Kang passed away on 7th May 2022 of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 55.
Additional Kang Soo-yeon films at the festival include Come Come Come Upward (1989), for which she won a Best Actress Award at the 1989 Moscow International Film Festival; The Road To The Race Track (1991) for which she won multiple Best Actress Awards at Asian Film Festivals; Girls’ Night Out (1998) which showed her comedic talents; and Rainbow Trout (1999) which won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2000.
Founder and former chairman of the Busan International Film Festival, Kim Dong-ho and Director of the Korean Film Archive, Kim Hong-joon will be participating in the Forum event dedicated to Kang and the Korea’s cinema landscape of her era. Kang was the co-director of BIFF from 2015-2017. Both Kim Dong-ho and Kim Hong-joon will be participating in Q&As following the screenings of Come Come Come Upward and The Road To The Race Track.
The Documentary strand features The 2nd Repatriation by Kim Dongwon focuses on political prisoners living in Seoul, who still hope for repatriation to North Korea. The film is a follow-up to the director’s 2003 documentaryRepatriation about the 63 long-term ‘unconverted’ political prisoners repatriated to North Korea in 2000. Also featured is Melting Icecreamby Hong Jinhwon, a documentary based on archival footage and I Am More is a fascinating study of ‘life as a stage’ by Lee II-ha as he depicts the life of More (Mo Jimin) a popular drag artist.
Indie Talents showcases new and emerging filmmakers and includes Lee Ji-eun’sThe Hill of Secrets (2022 Berlinale, Generation Kplus Competition) on a young girl caught between two conflicting worlds, played by Moon Seung-a, one of Korean cinema’s most exceptional child actors. Hot in Day, Cold at Night(2022 Berlin International Film Festival, Forum) might appear to be a depressing tale of economic hardship, but filmmaking-screenwriting duo Park Song-yeol and Won Hyang-ra – who also play the leading roles – have an entirely different tone in mind. Although not quite a comedy, the film’s finely-calibrated blend of sardonic humour and touching vulnerability have made this one of the year’s most talked-about Korean independent films. A quietly observed film with strong resonance, A Lonely Island in the Distant Sea by Kim Mi-young is a thoughtful consideration of a man facing the unexpected. Through My Midwinter, Oh Seong-ho’s debut feature, deals with a relationship under pressure and is made vivid by the performances of Kwon Da-ham and Kwon So-hyun (a former member of K-pop group 4Minute) as the stressed but sympathetic couple.
The Jeonju Shorts strand consists of a selection of shorts from this year’s awards winners (in the Shorts category) at the Jeonju International Film Festival including In The Dry Stream by Kang Ji-hyo, a subtle and poignant tale of childhood dreams that must make way for unhappy adult realities. Wunderkammer 10.0 by Ki Yelim, Park Soyun and Jung Inwoo, part science fiction, part social commentary, part art installation, this short is both a mystery and a manifesto. Moon Hyein’sTransit tests the bonds of friendship in light of gender transition. Students seek freedom and revenge in Yoo Jongseok’sLight It Up at 2AM. Framily by Kim In-hye deals with the complications of family ties and how they can strengthen in adversity. Paek Siwon’sLayers of Summer contemplates if unrequited love can be rekindled. 29th Breath by Kook Joong-yi focuses on an aspiring actress who keeps getting cast as a zombie and struggles to keep her dream alive – with dramatic consequences. In Kim Min-ju’s Trade, the lives of two very different, troubled people collide and they strive to outwit one another for their own again.
In the Artist Video strand, LUX and the LKFF join forces to present the first UK solo exhibition by Korean artist Yun Choi, who collects images, words and behaviors marked by Korean banality and remixes them for her videos and multimedia installations, tracing collective belief and reverie that underlie absurd socio-political phenomena. The exhibition at LUX presents two films that explore language as a bodily experience: the latest rendition of Choi’s film Where the Heart Goes_Poetry Collection (2022), and Viral Lingua (2018), a collaborative film made with Minhwi Lee.
The 17th London Korean Film Festival 2022 will take place from 3 November – 17 November.
Watch our trailer now:
For any press requests please contact festival publicist: Sanam Hasan: shasanpr@gmail.com (+44 7837 441 248)