Freer Gallery of Art
Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho, 2003, 129 min.)
Thursday, September 16, 7:30 PM
Special guests to be announced.
Based on an actual series of still-unsolved murders that took place between 1986 and 1991, this sophisticated, engrossing thriller was one of the biggest critical and audience hits of 2003. Featuring outstanding performances from its ensemble cast, it is a remarkable fusion of tragedy, comedy and old-fashioned detective drama. By focusing on two detectives -- one a brutal small town cop, the other a suave investigator called in from Seoul -- who work together to track down the killer, director Bong Joon-ho enriches an already suspenseful plot with probing questions about Korea's recent past. This film will be preceded by a reception at 6 PM and followed by a discussion. Screening courtesy of Palm Pictures.
Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo, 2004, 88 min.)
Friday, September 17, 7 PM
The latest film from Korea's most astute chronicler of contemporary relationships tells the story of a filmmaker and an art professor who, in a drunken moment, seek out the woman with whom each had an affair years earlier. Smart, witty, and visually compelling, this film was selected for competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
A Flower in Hell (Shin Sang-ok, 1958, 87 min., b&w)
Sunday, September 19, 2 PM
During its golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, Shin Sang-ok was known as the prince of Korean cinema, and this film is widely acknowledged as his masterpiece. Shin uses this searing social melodrama about a Korean prostitute's relationship with an American soldier to give a harrowing depiction of the turmoil that crippled Seoul after the Korean War.
The Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (Jang Sun-woo, 2002, 125 min.)
Friday, September 24, 7 PM
Special guest: Jang Sun-woo
Given a chance to make a big budget blockbuster, longtime maverick director Jang Sun-woo concocted this mind-blowing special effects extravaganza about a computer game based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale of "The Little Match Girl." Players enter a virtual reality that soon becomes indistinguishable from the real world. Structured like a video game, Jang's depiction of virtual reality is a one-of-a-kind blend of independent sensibility and sci-fi action.
Documentary Double Feature
Cinema on the Road: A Personal Essay on Cinema in Korea (Jang Sun-woo, 1995, 56 min., video)
My Korean Cinema (Kim Hong-joon, 2002, 60 min., video)
Saturday, September 25, 2:30 PM
Two distinctly personal views of Korean cinema are presented here. Jang Sun-woo's Cinema of the Road frames the development of Korean filmmaking as a triumph of creativity over oppression, while Kim Hong-joon's episodic My Korean Cinema looks at such diverse subjects as the defunct Seoul film studio district, the meaning of women smoking in Korean films, and Kim's work with master director Im Kwon-taek. A panel discussion follows.
Panel Discussion: The Past, Present, and Future of Korean Cinema
Saturday, September 25, 4:45 PM
Join a panel of filmmakers and scholars for a discussion of Korea's fascinating cinematic history, from its beginnings, through its golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, and to its emergence as a worldwide phenomenon in the 1990s.
Panelists
Kim Hong-joon, filmmaker (My Korean Cinema, La Vie En Rose, Jungle Story) and director of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival
Jang Sun-woo, filmmaker (Cinema of the Road, The Resurrection of the Little Match Girl, Age of Success, Lies)
Kyung Hyun Kim, professor, University of California, Irvine; author of The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema; and co-author of Im Kwon-taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema
Tom Vick, film programmer, Freer and Sackler Galleries, and co-programmer, Korean Film Festival, DC
Hyunjun Min, lecturer, University of Maryland, and co-programmer, Korean Film Festival, DC
A Hometown in Heart (Yoon Yong-kyu, 1948, 74 min., b&w)
Sunday, October 3, 2 PM
One of the few films made before the Korean War that still survives, this delicate drama follows the relationship shared by a Buddhist monk, a mischievous orphan to whom he is teaching the tenets of Buddhism, and a widowed young mother.
Aimless Bullet (Yoo Hyun-mok, 1961, 106 min., b&w)
Friday, October 8, 7 PM
Through moving performances and visually arresting black-and-white cinematography, this seminal work concerns the struggle of one family to recover from the devastation of the Korean War. Long banned for its harsh social commentary, it is now regarded as one of the greatest Korean films of the postwar era.
The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1961, 92 min., b&w)
Sunday, October 17, 2 PM
Dentist-turned-director Kim Ki-young was deemed the mad genius of the Korean film world, and this film is certainly his masterpiece. Full of plot twists and hallucinatory imagery, this psychosexual drama of madness and desire shows what can happen when a mentally unbalanced housemaid develops an obsession with the married master of the house.
A Good Windy Day (Lee Jang-ho, 1980, 113 min.)
Friday, October 22, 7 PM
This believable tale of three young men with dead-end jobs and big dreams struck a particular chord with contemporary audiences experiencing Korea's rapidly changing economy, yet its themes of thwarted love and youthful longing are undeniably universal. Korean film critics voted this popular hit the best film of the 1980s.
To the Starry Island (Park Kwang-su, 1993, 101 min.)
Sunday, October 24, 2 PM
A mystery of sorts, this astonishing work of visual poetry explores how the scars of the Korean War still affect the present day. It begins as the inhabitants of a remote island village try to turn away a boat containing the coffin of a man who was born there. The film then flows between past and present to reveal the origins of their resentment.
Festival (Im Kwon-taek, 1996, 108 min.)
Friday, October 29, 7 PM
With a career spanning four decades and countless awards, Im Kwon-taek is one of the best-known Korean directors in the world. Like many of his films, this one offers both exquisite beauty and an incisive look at Korean history and tradition. A successful Seoul novelist is called home to attend his mother's funeral. Family tensions and resentments erupt, but the three-day traditional ceremony—lovingly filmed by Im—brings hope for reconciliation.
Green Fish (Lee Chang-dong, 1997, 111 min.)
Sunday, October 31, 2 PM
Returning home from the military, a young man finds his small town transformed into a maze of skyscrapers and his family struggling to make ends meet. Forgotten by the new Korean economy, he falls in with a vicious gang. The directorial debut of novelist and screenwriter Lee Chang-dong is a surprisingly beautiful and moving film of innocence lost.
Avalon Theatre
Eunuch (Shin Sang-ok, 1968, 94 min.)
Monday, September 20, 7 PM
Filmed in rapturous wide-screen Technicolor, this period drama features a romance between a eunuch and a concubine in the service of a medieval Korean ruler. A hothouse of treachery and repressed desire, Eunuch shows off Shin's exceptional gifts as a popular filmmaker.
Age of Success (Jang Sun-woo, 1988, 105 min.)
Monday, September 27, 7 PM
Special guest: Jang Sun-woo
A savagely funny satire on rapacious materialism, this film from a true "bad boy" of Korean cinema features an ambitious advertising executive who devises a marketing campaign based on a return to traditional values, only to be driven mad by his attempts to interest the public in his ideas.
A Good Lawyer's Wife (Im Sang-soo, 2003, 104 min.)
Monday, October 4, 7 PM
This dark, erotic drama, with its frank depiction of female sexual desire and the hypocrisy of traditional family life, became one of the most discussed Korean films of recent years. It stars Moon So-ri in a daring performance as a housewife who, neglected by her philandering husband, embarks on an affair with a teenage neighbor.
Sorum (Yun Jong-chan, 2001, 100 min.)
Monday, October 11, 7 PM
Five tenants of a creepy apartment complex slowly realize that they each have a skeleton in their closet, and the building has a few scary secrets of its own. A psychological horror movie similar to The Shining, this film delivers food for thought as well as bumps in the night.
Promise of the Flesh (Kim Ki-young, 1975, 95 min.)
Monday, October 18, 7 PM
A female murderer on furlough from prison is encouraged by her travel companion to plunge into a lusty affair with a man they meet on a train. The late, great eccentric Kim Ki-young directed this deliciously perverse film.
The Coast Guard (Kim Ki-duk, 2002, 95 min.)
Monday, October 25, 7 PM
A gung-ho young soldier mistakenly shoots and kills a local villager who is making love on a beach. This accident propels the victim's girlfriend into madness and throws the soldier into his own guilt-ridden hell. Kim Ki-duk, by far Korea's most controversial contemporary director and distinctive stylists, unflinchingly uses this harrowing allegory to illustrate the human toll caused by the longstanding border tensions between North and South Korea.
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Jealousy Is My Middle Name (Park Chan-ok, 2003, 125 min.)
Tuesday, September 21, 7 PM
First-time writer-director Park distinguishes herself in this complex drama that deftly intertwines character study with revenge thriller. A man shrewdly lands a job working for an older publisher who stole his girlfriend. Complications arise when another woman enters the hero's life, and she, too, gravitates towards the publisher.
Ardor (Byun Young-joo, 2002, 112 min.)
Wednesday, September 22, 7 PM
In this sensuous story of adultery, a middle-class housewife whose husband is cheating on her encounters a married male neighbor who proposes a sex game to her—but only after one of them falls in love with the other. Erotic and haunting, Byun's film reveals how temptation and passion often stir psychological turbulence.
The Art Museum by the Zoo (Lee Jung-Hyang, 1998, 108 min.)
Wednesday, September 29, 7 PM
A chauvinistic soldier returns to his girlfriend's apartment and discovers that she has moved out to marry another man. A female videographer-aspiring screenwriter now lives there in her place. Director Lee's warm-hearted romantic comedy, with its contemplative dialogue and charming visual compositions, examines the dichotomies between men and women, body and soul, desire and romance.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Camel(s) (Park Ki-yong, 2002, 92 min., b&w)
Friday, October 1, 8 PM
With its perfectly composed takes and nuanced acting performances, this film offers a moving account of a weekend affair. Director Park Ki-yong's style lies somewhere between documentary and voyeuristic, as his calmly observant camera slowly reveals the details of the couple's lives through subtle gestures and bits of conversation. The result is simply hypnotic.
Invisible Light (Gina Kim, 2003, 78 min.)
Thursday, October 21, 8 PM
Special guest: Gina Kim
Two women—one, a student with an eating disorder in Los Angeles; the other, a married woman who travels home to Seoul after she discovers she's pregnant—and their connected stories structure this experimental feature. Director Gina Kim displays a mastery of the subtleties of sound and image as she delves into the troubled inner lives of these women with ruthless honesty and intimacy.
AFI Kennedy Center
Please Teach Me English (Kim Sung-su, 2003, 118 min.)
Monday, September 20, 8:40 PM
Wednesday, October 6, 8:15 PM
Outstanding comic performances highlight this over-the-top laugh fest that employs everything from animated thought balloons and video game parodies to bizarre fantasy sequences. Here is a fine example of the best in Korean romantic comedy. Young-ju, a young woman sent to English-language school by her employer, soon finds herself smitten with Moon-su, a suave fellow student. Unfortunately, Moon-su has the hots for their Australian teacher.
Bungee Jumping of Their Own (Kim Dae-seung, 2001, 107 min.)
Tuesday, October 5, 6:30 PM
Saturday, October 9, 4:30 PM
The idea of eternal love attains new meaning in this critically acclaimed romance. Seventeen years after his lover dies, a teacher finds himself believing she has been reincarnated in the body of one of his male students. This provocative premise plays out in surprising ways and leads to a sublime conclusion that is both moving and funny.
The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong Sang-soo, 2000, 126 min., b&w)
Tuesday, October 5, 8:30 PM
Saturday, October 9, 2 PM
Director Hong Sang-soo's trademark dry wit and powerful visual style are on full display in this sly head game of a movie. Divided into two parts, it follows an awkward relationship among a filmmaker, his friend, and a beautiful woman. The first half presents the story, and the second half retells it with significant details altered in mysterious ways.
Waikiki Brothers (Im Sun-rye, 2001, 105 min.)
Saturday, October 9, 6:30 PM
Sunday, October 10, 4:15 PM
This wistful comedy documents the disintegration of a never-quite-successful rock band made of high school friends who are now sliding into middle age. Sprinkled with goofy cover versions of Western and Korean pop hits, Im's film uses perfect emotional pitch to present these characters' inability to let go of their dreams.
My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001, 123 min.)
Saturday, October 9, 8:30 PM
Sunday, October 10, 2 PM
A huge smash with Korean audiences, this kind of screwball romantic comedy has rarely been seen since the 1930s, but here it is done with an unmistakably contemporary flair. After encountering a young drunk woman on a subway platform, a college student carries her to a motel, where a perfectly understandable misunderstanding leads to one of the most chaotic and hilarious love affairs ever shown on screen.
Marriage Story (Kim Ui-seok, 1992, 101 min.)
Wednesday, October 20, 6:30 PM
Thursday, October 21, 8:45 PM
Enjoy one of the most successful of the "sex war" comedies that have been popular with Korean audiences since the early 1990s. This film presents, with a light, funny touch, the feminist stirrings of a wife who discovers that her husband is getting more out of their activities in the bedroom than she is.
The Foul King (Kim Ji-woon, 2000, 122 min.)
Wednesday, October 20, 8:20 PM
Thursday, October 21, 6:30 PM
Slapstick gags abound in this hilarious tale of a humble bank clerk who, after one too many humiliating headlocks from the boss, transforms himself into the Foul King, a professional wrestler specializing in crowd-pleasing dirty tricks.
AFI Silver Theatre
My Love, My Bride (Lee Myung-se, 1990, 108 min.)
Wednesday, October 6, 6:30 PM
Thursday, October 7, 8:40 PM
With its smart mix of cinematic verve and good-natured humor, this brilliantly inventive comedy kicked off the popular genre of "sex war" comedies in Korea. Structured in eight chapters, it traces the series of minor disasters that adds up to the courtship of a struggling writer and his college sweetheart.
