Asian Movies All Over the Map

...One of the festival’s real finds is the South Korean film “Breathless,” a closely observed drama written, produced and co-directed by its star, the vividly talented Yang Ik-june. An enforcer for small-time loan sharks, Mr. Yang’s character, Sang-hoon, has found a professional outlet for his violent nature, though he’s hardly a becalmed spirit. He goes through life cursing and clobbering his co-workers and family until he encounters a high school girl even more foulmouthed than he is. Without editorializing, “Breathless” suggests that while South Korea may have moved beyond a militaristic, authoritarian culture, residue of the dark era — in the form of an interpersonal network of brutality and victimization — survives...

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/movies/19asia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

기자 아저씨가 제대로 보셨다.
군국주의, 권위주의에서 벗어났다고 생각하지만 사실 그 시대의 잔여는 아직도 버젓이 한국 사회에 남아있는거다.. 도대체 언제쯤 그 찌끄러기가 사라질지... 안타깝다.

Kim Ki-Duk Restrospective
April 23–May 8, 2008

The Department of Film presents the first complete U.S. retrospective of writer-director Kim Ki-Duk (b. 1960, Bonghwa), a self-taught maverick Korean filmmaker whose work has enriched international cinema with its luminous intensity. This fourteen-film exhibition includes several features never before seen in the U.S., giving audiences a rare chance to chart the development of the director's sensuous, sensational imagery and wild and haunting narratives.

Kim Ki-Duk was a factory worker, soldier, priest-in-training, and, between 1992 and 1995, a street artist in France, where he discovered cinema through films like Leos Carax's Les amants de Pont-Neuf and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (both 1991). After winning a screenwriting competition in Korea, Kim was able to make, without any formal training, his first feature, Crocodile (1996). Kim's debut film, long out of circulation, heralded the arrival of a furious young self-taught talent with a vision that, brutal though it is, is grounded in redemption. Over the next eleven years, thirteen more films followed, including three of his best-known films in the United States, the libidinous The Isle (2000), the Buddhist-inflected Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003), and an elliptical treatise on invisibility, 3-Iron (2004).

Kim's films cohere into a vivid and compelling body of work characterized by sweeping camera movements and long, richly composed shots. They are populated by characters, uneasy in their social situations, who adopt silence as a protection and whose reactions tend to be brutal; what distinguishes these narratives is what follows this savagery. His films take place in a world sometimes circumscribed by water, but always situated in a cinematic space a couple of degrees sharper than reality. All films are directed by Kim, from South Korea, and in Korean with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.

MoMA Exhibition "Kim Ki-Duk":
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=8164

Related Screenings:
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=8164#screenings

''Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring'' review by NY Times:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E6DA1639F932A05750C0A9629C8B63

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.

Official Website (Movie):
http://www.sonyclassics.com/persepolis/

A Movie Review by NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/arts/25pers.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Persepolis, the Graphic Novel:
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/persepolis.html

are you serious?!?!?!
oh man oh man......don't tell me it's for real.
나에게는 그저 한 장의 사진이 아닌 추억으로 간직되는 폴라로이드인데...
please don't take it away from me.
my memento...

Read articles:
[AP] Post-Polaroid Worries Mount
[New York Times] Polaroid Closing Instant Film Factories

믿을 수가 없다.
믿겨지지 않는다.
정말이야? 사실이야?
정말 타버렸어...?

말을 잃었다는 표현이 정말 맞다.
그냥 멍-하다.
뭐라고 표현할 수 없는 그런 어안이 벙벙한 상태..
마음이 착찹하다.

2차 붕괴 위험까지 있다던데,
잘 복구해낼 수 있을까?

구정으로 2008년이 밝은지 얼마 되지 않았는데
이런 일이 생겨서 사람들 마음이 더 안 좋을 것 같다.
멀리 있는 나도 이런데 가까이 있는 국민들의 마음은 어떨지 참...
휴우...

누구의 탓인가 잘잘못 따지고 책임을 떠 미루기 보다는
숭례문을 어떻게 다시 복원할 것인지,
이런 일이 다른 문화재에 생기지 않도록 지금부터 어떻게 예방할 것인지
그런 것에 대해 얘기하고 계획을 세워야할텐데..

슬프다 이런 일이 생겨서..
이런 일이 생겨서 정말 슬프다...

"어떤 건물인데…" 대목장의 절규

다른 어떤 기사들 보다 이 기사를 보고 마음이 더욱 아팠다.
무너져내렸을 그의 마음을 이해할 수 있을 것 같다.

+
Read related article from the New York Times:
South Korean Gate Destroyed in Fire
The collapse of Sungnye Gate, a 600-year-old landmark designated a top national treasure, shocked the country.

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i do not disagree with the claim that the Gate was kind of a simulacrum: a mere object which contributed to the image-making of "Dynamic Korea." however, i still feel saddened by the fact that it is destroyed because i am deeply sympathetic to the Gate which stood there for 600 years. whether it be a simulacrum, a landmark, an image, a treasure (i don't give a dang about modifiers/describers/adjectives), the Gate simply didn't deserve such treatment..