Korean Cinema Today - Opening

The Busan Festival, Asia’s most important and dynamic film gathering, has experienced a meteoric rise. This parallels the success of Korean film at the world’s most important festivals: with awards from Cannes to Berlin, Venice to Hong Kong, Korean directors have long achieved their international breakthrough. Now a new generation has entered the stage. The 18th Busan International Film Festival, which came to an end last October, was a great success with the public: It attracted over 200,000 filmgoers. Furthermore, in its sections “New Currents,” “Korean Cinema Today” and “Wide Angle,” which annually screen the best contemporary Korean productions, new trends were also apparent: a broad spectrum of debut features and the changed, strong role of women—as protagonists and as directors. Alongside works from Yeon Sangho and Hong Sangsoo, and a classic from Lee Man- hee, the HKW presents a selection of films from the BIFF 2013 which dramatically reflect these trends: new cinematic perspectives from Korea.

6pm Kimchi Princess goes HKW
(Menu kimchiprincess.com/hkw)

7pm Opening
In attendance of Hong Hyosook, programmer Busan International Film Festival and co-curator, Cho Young-jung, film historian, and the directors from Korea

followed by Han gong-ju
D: Lee Su-jin, Korea 2013, 112 min, English subtitles
The teacher’s mother doesn’t understand why her son brings the girl, a former student of his, to live with her. The 17-year-old Han Gong-Ju is distraught and withdrawn. At her new school, too, she keeps to herself. The grumpy old woman and the constantly downcast girl make an unlikely pair who somehow manages to find common ground. Little by little, Gong-Ju also opens up to another girl at school, and she joins the school choir. But then the appalling “incident” for which she was banned from her old school and town becomes known. Can she, alone, put the past behind her?
Tiger Award International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014

and after the film: Lounge with DJ and Drinks by Kimchi Princess

Cho Young-jung (*1967) is a film historian with a doctoral degree and was program coordinator for Korean Cinema Retrospective at the BIFF until 2006. Since 2007, she has been managing director of the Asian Film Academy, a training program for young filmmakers from Asia.

Hong Hyosook (*1968), curator of Korean Cinema Today, heads the Asian Cinema Fund.She worked at the Seoul Visual Collective as a documentary filmmaker and representative. Since 1997, she has worked for BIFF, where she is programmer of the section “Wide Angle.”