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Evergreen Tree.Produced during South Korean cinema’s so-called Golden Age, Shin Sang-ok’s classic film Evergreen Tree is about an idealistic young teacher, Chae (Choi Eun-hee), who teaches Korean Hangul to provincial children in defiance of the Japanese colonial authorities. The plot, a tragic love story, expressed Koreans’ desire for national self-determination after 40 years of Japanese domination. After vocational school, Chae and another student fall in love and decide to return to their rural hometowns to teach, only to be physically and psychologically defeated by local collaborationists. The movie, a propagandistic but potent adaptation of a famous independence novel of the 1930s, shows that hatred of Japanese colonialism was, in 1961, one of the few subjects that could unite the people of the North and the South in agreement. It was admired by both the South’s nationalist dictator Park Chung-hee, who seized power in a coup d’état while...

Film at Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema announce “Korean Cinema's Golden Decade: The 1960s,” a sweeping retrospective that features 24 films from this remarkable period in Korean film history. The series will run from September 1–17 and is one of the largest retrospectives ever of 1960s Korean Cinema outside of Korea, including many rarely screened films, several presented on 35mm archival prints.

Long before Bong Joon Ho, Hong Sangsoo, and Park Chan-wook catapulted South Korean cinema onto the world stage, the foundation of their country's film industry formed in the aftermath of the Korean War. The period kickstarted a wealth of eclectic and innovative filmmaking that culminated in the 1960s. Closer inspection of this decade, now widely considered Korea's premier film renaissance, reveals the arrival of seminal works from auteurs such as Kim Ki-young, Shin Sang-ok, Yu Hyun-mok, Kim Soo-yong, and Lee Man-hee, alongside a meteoric rise and reinvention of genres—from...

What do the 3 Ninjas franchise and Kim Jong-il have in common? Let’s just say your childhood nostalgia is only possible through a harrowing trip to a re-education camp. North Korean strongman, and supposed deity, Kim was groomed from an early age to inherit his father’s (Kim Il-sung) position as the supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Never mind the “democratic republic” part. Either that title was propaganda or something was lost in translation.

And propaganda would, fittingly, play a crucial part in Kim’s life. Kim was not just any ordinary nepo baby, but one entrusted to maintain the facade of North Korea, pretending the country to be a workers’ paradise while torturing and locking up dissenters. Like many a socialist utopia before him, Kim too sleep walked into a catastrophic famine that was desperately covered up with fake news. Not too hard to...

It's not often that you can say that a literal series of crimes were the reason behind several movies getting made, but for Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, that is sadly the case. In 1978, Eun-hee, an acclaimed South Korean actress, was kidnapped by North Korean forces, where she would be forced by Kim Jong-il to act in films for his country. This was followed by the kidnapping of her ex-husband, Sang-ok, only six months later, with the expectation that he would continue his directing career in North Korea. Odd circumstances have led to the making of movies and troubled productions before, but when have they ever been this disturbing and calculated? The two would make several movies while kept closely under Kim Jong-il's watch, and even though there would be an effort to make the situation appear to be a seamless career transition, it was anything but that.

Now in its fourth year, Queer East will return to cinema screens across the capital and around the UK in 2023 with another exciting line-up which mixes contemporary feature film and documentary with retrospective screenings, short films, artists’ moving image works, a VR cinematic experience and dance productions that explore a diverse range of topical LGBTQ+ issues. Through an incredible programme of cinema and performance art the festival will push boundaries and challenge expectations and labels commonly associated with queer communities. Queer East’s vital programme is sure to provoke, inspire and engage.

Consisting of a main festival which will take from 18 to 30 April 2023 across eight venues in London, and a nationwide tour planned from September to November across ten cities, Queer East 2023 features 50 films incorporating work from 17 countries across East and Southeast Asia and beyond.

New additions to this year’s festival include Focus Korea which consists of 15 titles spanning...

Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with an assessment of an obscure period chiller expertly assembled by Shen Hsiang Yu. One of the Shaw Brothers’ early attempts at screen horror, this superior gothic romance with a supernatural twist failed to find an audience upon its initial domestic release — a circumstance that led to the studio changing tack and pursuing a more exploitative line of genre flick. However, 45 years on it plays like the kind of film that jaded and/or discerning genre fans might well take great delight in discovering.

The Ghost Lovers

Region B Blu-ray

88 Films

1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 92 min. / Yan nu huan hun / Street Date March 12 2018 / available through Amazon UK or Amazon Us / £14.99

Starring: Ching Lee, Wei Tu Lin.

Cinematography: Cheng-Min Tsui

Film Editor: Hsing-Lung Chiang

Art Director: Mao-Lung Lin

Original Music: Yung-Yu Cheng

Written by Yi-Lu Kuo

Produced by Runme Shaw

Directed by Shen Hsiang Yu (aka Sang-ok Shin...

The veteran documentary-maker revisits a romantic interlude during a visit to North Korea in the 1950s, and the result is self-indulgent but undeniably fascinating

We are living through a mini-boom in documentaries about North Korea. Film-makers are getting into Pyongyang to shoot – clandestinely, semi-clandestinely and on various pretexts – those vast statues and eerie cityscapes. Werner Herzog’s Into the Inferno suggested the North Koreans’ defensive mindset had something to do with living in the shadow of a volcano, Mount Paektu. Norwegian director Morten Traavik told the extraordinary story of how obscure Slovenian art-rockers Laibach became the first Western band to play North Korea. Alvaro Longorio’s The Propaganda Game argued that North Korea is a zombie state, kept alive by the duplicitous interests of great powers, and Ross Adam and Robert Cannon’s The Lovers and the Despot is about the staggering true story of how in late 70s the...

No Korean movie has ever won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that no Korean movie has ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In other words, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” — which won a little gold man for Best Art Direction in 2010 — has more Oscars to its name than the entire country of Korea or anyone from it.

That’s odd and rather damning given the self-evident strength of the country’s national cinema, which has been invaluable since long before Shin Sang-ok’s “My Mother and the Roomer” was chosen as their first Oscar submission in 1962. It’s become only more visible on the world stage thanks to the emotionally operatic, auteur-driven melodramas that have defined the Korean New Wave over the last 18 years.

And it’s not as...

A documentary on Kim Jong-il’s bizarre abduction of a film director and his wife is fascinating but leaves you wanting more

Frustrated by the low quality of domestic film production, the North Korean dictator and movie buff Kim Jong-il took matters into his own hands. In 1978, he kidnapped a revered South Korean director, Shin Sang-ok, and his estranged actress wife, Choi Eun-hee, and forced them to make films in North Korea. It’s an extraordinary story, and almost enough to sustain this often engaging documentary. However, you find yourself wishing that the film-makers were able to offer more of an insight into day-to-day life within this most secretive of countries.

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Sometimes, a story is literally too bewildering to really believe at first blush. Documentary cinema is chock full of these tales, which is partly what makes the art form so genuinely enthralling. Despite being more often than not rigid in its structure and form, a compelling, true life story can elevate even the most standard of non-fiction film. And that’s the case with the latest film from directors Rob Cannan and Ross Adam.

Entitled The Lovers and The Despot, Cannan and Adam introduce us to the husband and wife duo of South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his muse, actress Choi Eun-hee, who met while working on a film in the 1950s, and subsequently fell head over heels in love. However, things took a troubling turn in the late 1970s, when Choi was kidnapped in Hong Kong by a group of North Korean agents after working on a cavalcade of massively popular films.

In The Lovers and the Despot, Ross Adam and Robert Cannan recount the bizarre and fantastic story of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, two darlings of the South Korean film industry kidnapped by Kim-Jong-il to make North Korea a leader in world cinema. CineVue's Maximilian Von Thun spoke to the directorial duo about the making of the film, its unsolved mysteries, and the realities of life in North Korea.

When the North Korean dictator wanted a film industry he simply abducted a successful South Korean film-maker and his wife, beginning this bizarre true story of grotesque abuse

At last: one of the most staggeringly strange cases of Stockholm syndrome in history – and surely the weirdest story ever to have emerged from world cinema – now has been given the serious documentary treatment. In the 1950s and 60s, producer-director Shin Sang-ok was the titan of South Korean cinema, but by the 70s his career was flagging. In North Korea, the dysfunctional communist princeling Kim Jong-il was obsessed with movies and conceived the bizarre notion of jump-starting his nation’s film industry by abducting Shin to work for him. This he did by instructing an agent to pose as a producer, luring Shin’s ex-wife Choi Eun-hee to Hong Kong with the promise of a role, kidnapping her and taking her to North Korea.

Kim Jong-il loved movies. In fact, the late North Korean leader loved them so much that he despaired for his country’s sub-par cinematic output. (“Why do our movies have so much crying?” he once asked, without irony.) His solution: kidnap some talented people to make North Korean films look cool. Kim’s victims, director Shin Sang-ok and Shin’s ex-wife, the movie star Choi Eun-hee, were the perfect prey. They had been married and then divorced, had two adopted children, and were enjoying glamorous lives and flourishing film careers. Then in 1978, they disappeared, their story shocking South Korea. Robert Cannan and Ross.

Truth is stranger than fiction. In 1978, famous South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife, actress Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in Hong Kong by North Korean agents under order of Kim Jung-il, the future leader of North Korea. While they were held as captives, they made 7 movies in the hermit kingdom, until they made a daring escape in 1986 to Vienna. This bizarre and fantastic experiences that Shin and Choi went through reads like a crazy combination of a high-flying political thriller and a lurid tale from the dark underbelly of the movie business. And it's totally ripe for a movie adaptation that could easily be much more fascinating and entertaining than Ben Affleck's Argo.  Two British filmmakers, Robert Canaan and Ross Adam,...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Hollywood is full of unscrupulous, power-mad producers, but none of them could ever hold a candle to Kim Jong-il. Fondly remembered as a sociopathic dictator, the former “Dear Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” was also a notorious cinephile who — even before his father bequeathed him supreme control of the country — actively tried to weaponize motion pictures in order to fortify ideology at home and bolster North Korea’s reputation abroad. He even wrote a book about film theory called “On the Art of the Cinema,” a revolutionary text which offers almost as much insight into movies as “The Art of the Deal” does into business.

Needless to say, when Kim required something to enhance the local industry, people tended to do whatever was necessary in order to make it happen; after all, “You’ll never eat in this town again” is a particularly dire threat in...

Welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly look at the new movies hitting theaters this weekend, as well as other cool events and things to check out.

This Past Weekend:

Yikes. What a terrible weekend we just had, not only for the new movies released but also for the Weekend Warrior’s predictions. Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks’ Sully won its second weekend in a row with just under $22 million, but as far as the new movies, neither Lionsgate’s Blair Witch nor Universal’s Bridget Jones’s Baby did very well, putting the last nail in the coffin (hopefully) for sequels/remakes trying to play upon nostalgia that just isn’t there. (Good luck to the Rings movie opening next month!) Blair Witch ended up with $9.6 million to take second place and both Bridget Jones’s Baby and Oliver Stone’s Snowden ended up with around $8 million, so...

Contemporary filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, and Kim Ki-duk have landed South Korean movies in U.S. arthouses, but their success hasn’t yet led to much interest in the country’s rich cinematic history. One of the most overlooked figures in the West is Shin Sang-ok, a prolific director whose regular collaboration with his wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, produced at least one masterpiece: 1961’s romantic weepie The Houseguest And My Mother (sometimes called My Mother’s Tenant). Shin’s films are extremely difficult to see in the States, and one can only hope that The Lovers And The Despot, a new documentary about Shin and Choi, will help to change that. Unfortunately, this bland, incurious oral history focuses exclusively on what’s admittedly the most superficially fascinating chapter of their lives: the eight years they spent making movies together in North Korea, after Kim Jong-il had them ...

The story chronicled in the new documentary The Lovers and the Despot sounds like a joke, which only makes the truth of it feel all the weirder and all the more horrifying. In 1978, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il abducted South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee (who were estranged lovers) and forced them to help […]

The post ‘The Lovers and the Despot’ Trailer: One of the Most Unbelievable True Stories in Cinema History appeared first on /Film.

Called one of international cinema’s greatest love stories – and wildest – “The Lovers and the Despot” tells the true-life story of how South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee, met and fell in love in post-war Korea. After a successful film career, they were both kidnapped by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.

A big fan of the duo and obsessed with movies, Jong-il forced them to create features for his pleasure and to improve North Korea’s film business. During their imprisonment, Choi and Shin gained the dictator’s trust and made 17 feature films, all while planning their escape.

“Kim laughed out loud like a triumphant general,” says Choi in the trailer about her experience. “Like a puppet, I was told what to eat, I was even told what to wear.”

Read More: ‘The Lovers and the Despot’ Exclusive Poster: New Doc Follows Director-Actress Couple Kidnapped By Kim Jong-il...

Sometimes, stories of love, abduction, and espionage don’t have to be concocted by a screenwriter because they already exist. Directors Ross Adam and Robert Cannan (who made his debut in 2008 with Three Miles North of Molkom) have teamed up for the documentary The Lovers and the Despot, a bizarre story about an actress and director who are taken hostage by Kim Jong-il. Looking equal parts a tale of undying love and espionage thriller, the first trailer promises a story that is stranger than fiction.

Unfortunately, the film itself falls back onto tired documentary formulas, as we said in our review, “The doc still relies on a parade of basic interviews to tell its story, and presents them without an iota of imagination. Why have so few realized that this is the essence of telling instead of showing, that it is awfully difficult to make dramatically engaging, much less satisfying?...

The Lovers And The Despot

Visitors to the Edinburgh International Film Festival expressed frustration today after the ticket purchasing system on the festival's website slowed to a crawl. According to staff at the festival, hacking is thought to be responsible. The public have been asked to persevere as each page takes around 15 minutes to load.

Although little is known about the source of the problem at this stage, suspicion has fallen on North Korea, with one industry insider speculating that it may have taken umbrage at the planned screening of a documentary about Kim Jong Il's kidnap of his favourite film director. The Lovers And The Despot explores the abduction of director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee, who was held hostage as Shin was forced to make films that accorded with the then leader's tastes - many of them monster movies. In 2014 the Hermit Kingdom was the.

The new documentary "The Lovers and the Despot" follows the romance between film director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee, the "Brangelina" of '70s South Korea. Though they were a glamorous couple, fame eventually took its toll on their relationship, but it also resulted in a strange twist of fate. The two eventually were kidnapped by the North Korean regime and forced to play along with a bizarre filmmaking project courtesy of dictator Kim Jong-il, a big fan of the Shin and Choi. Amidst their imprisonment and torture, the two eventually rekindled their romance and realize that making movies is their only way to escape the ugly reality of their fate. Check out the poster above. Read More: Sundance Review: Kim Jong-Il Kidnaps A Filmmaking Couple In Documentary ‘The Lovers And The Despot’ "The Lovers & The Despot" premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. It also screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival,...

The Lovers And The Despot Magnolia Films Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya Grade: B+ Director: Rob Cannan, Ross Adam Written by: Rob Cannan, Ross Adam Cast: Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee, Kim-Jong Il, Paul Courtenay Hu Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 3/29/16 Opens: August, 2016 North Korea is such a bizarre country that a documentary filmed within its confines looks like an unbelievable sci-fi film. Isolated with the world’s longest-running dictatorship, this Communist nation depends on the support of China, which has become increasingly wary of the cultish leaders. Though the only remaining, truly Communist state left, it is actually like a monarchy, with its despots passing the reign to their [ Read More ]

The post The Lovers and the Despot Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

It’s astonishing that the story of Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee has not made it onto movie screens before now, whether as a documentary or a work of fiction. In 1978 Shin, a South Korean film director, and Choi, his actress ex-wife, were both kidnapped by North Korean agents and taken to Pyongyang on the direct order of Kim Jong-il. The brutal dictator was also a dedicated cinephile, and he was displeased with the quality of his state’s film industry. For a real-life supervillain, the obvious solution to such a problem was to abduct some outside talent and put it to work.

Shin and Choi spent years being imprisoned and constantly surveilled, ultimately making films for Kim and even falling back in love before making a dramatic vehicular escape in Austria. Every single element reads like it sprung from the mind of a Hollywood hack. And yet it all happened.

Read: Sundance Exclusive: Clip From ‘The Lovers And The Despot’ Goes Over The Border Into North Korea Magnolia Pictures has acquired worldwide distribution rights to the documentary "The Lovers and the Despot," which saw its premiere this week at the Sundance Film Festival. Co-directors Rob Cannan ("Three Miles North of Molkom") and Ross Adams' stranger-than-fiction documentary chronicles the bizarre circumstances in which filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee, South Korea's darling celebrity couple, were kidnapped and forced to be Kim Jong-il's personal filmmakers. While imprisoned and planning their escape, the filmmaking duo was forced to produce 17 movies for the film-obsessed despot. But while working for the megalomaniacal leader, the cunning couple began fostering a trusting relationship with the dictator as a means of gaining an opportunity to flee back to their native South Korea. "Rob and Ross have captured a...

We’re a little over a year from the semi-aborted release of “The Interview,” Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s comedy that passed almost instantly into legend when (supposedly) North Korean hackers attacked the film’s backers Sony in retribution for the film’s satirical portrait, and fictional killing of, the country’s dictatorial leader Kim Jong-Un. So it’s perhaps a little surprising to see another movie premiering at Sundance that hits similar territory: again focusing on a North Korean leader (Kim’s late father Kim Jong-Il) and his infatuation with celebrity, touched with some espionage and dark humor. The difference this time is that Rob Cannan and Ross Adam’s film “The Lovers And The Despot” tells an entirely true story. Read More: The 30 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Sundance Film Festival It’s one that you might be familiar with in the broad strokes, but likely not in this kind of detail.

There’s an incredible story somewhere in this tale of how an actor and her husband were forced to make films for the late dictator, but this documentary buries it by way of over-measured effects and chronic pussy-footing

There’s not a lot that’s warm and fuzzy about the late dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. One factoid that floats around is that “the guy loved movies!” As the documentary The Lovers and the Despot shows, even this is tinged with darkness.

Built around a lengthy interview with former film star Choi Eun-hee, directors Robert Cannan and Ross Adam tell the strange tale of how Choi, a South Korean, and her ex-husband, director Shin Sang-ok, were kidnapped by Kim’s agents and pressed into servitude, with the order to make North Korea’s film output great.

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There’s an incredible story somewhere in this tale of how an actor and her husband were forced to make films for the late dictator, but this documentary buries it by way of over-measured effects and chronic pussy-footing

There’s not a lot that’s warm and fuzzy about the late dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. One factoid that floats around is that “the guy loved movies!” As the documentary The Lovers and the Despot shows, even this is tinged with darkness.

Built around a lengthy interview with former film star Choi Eun-hee, directors Robert Cannan and Ross Adam tell the strange tale of how Choi, a South Korean, and her ex-husband, director Shin Sang-ok, were kidnapped by Kim’s agents and pressed into servitude, with the order to make North Korea’s film output great.

Continue reading...

Perhaps one of the last great, and truly bizarre, propaganda machines on the planet, the North Korean government has become expert at attempting to sell itself as bigger, more threatening, and as culturally advanced as the world around it. However, that bluster has also seen the leadership make desperate moves, and the upcoming documentary “The Lovers And The Despot,” premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, dives into a truly odd portion of the country’s history. Read More: The 30 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Sundance Film Festival Directed by Ross Adam and Robert Cannan, the film tells the story of South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and leading actress Choi Eun-hee, both of whom wind up imprisoned and kidnapped separately by North Korea, and reunited by Kim Jong-il, who has another plan up his sleeve for them… Here’s the official synopsis: In the aftermath of the Korean War, ambitious young...

From North Korea kidnapping Shin Sang-ok to Richard Burton being hired by Tito, fame-hungry demagogues have always understood the power of the movies. But, as new comedy Lost in Karastan shows, working with tyrants can be tiring

There were many reasons why Apocalypse Now fell behind schedule. Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos was just one of them. He was happy to loan his helicopters, but then he wanted them back – the better to crush pesky rebellions. But his martial law did at least mean locals were braced for another formidable taskmaster: the film’s director, Francis Ford Coppola. These people were prepped for high-maintenance leaders. “Coppola was God,” the director’s Filipino liaison later said. “Our mantra was, if he asks for a pink elephant, you shout: ‘Coming!’ and figure it out later.”

Related: Draft excluder: Napoleon - the greatest movie never made?

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My second trip to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah promises to be much colder, though no less exciting than last year’s unseasonably-warm introduction. You could barely hear yourself think over the constant roar of snow cannons trying to preserve the anemic ski slopes. This year finds a return to freezing temperatures and the emergence of female directors. Over 40 feature films are helmed by women.

My personal approach to this year’s festival will be to focus on diversity. Rather than plunging into one particular Section, I will sample generously from each, with no regard to the obscurity of the title. Last year’s Next Section, for example, produce three of my favorite films of 2015, including H., James White, and Tangerine. With that in mind, here are my 10 most anticipated films from Sundance 2016.

The Lure

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska

Section: World Dramatic Competition

What to make of a film that promises mermaids,...

The Housemaid

Written by Kim Ki-young

Directed by Kim Ki-young

South Korea, 1960

In 2013, the Criterion Collection released a Blu-Ray/DVD box set called ‘Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’, featuring six films from other countries, either dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, which have been digitally restored by the efforts of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation. It should come as no surprise that Scorsese is a cineaste at heart and his love for foreign films, particularly those that have dropped in obscurity, shines thru these presentations. However, like with films that are re-discovered and/or re-evaluated, occasionally you’ll find some that live up to their reputation or not. For my money, the best film in the set is the 1964 Turkish melodrama Dry Summer (1964; Turkish title: Susuz Yaz), which I have already reviewed and sang praises for. The other films in the set include The Journey of the...

Earlier this month, the first trailer for the Seth Rogen/ James Franco comedy The Interview dropped. It played pretty well here in America, but given its plot follows a group of journalists who decide to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, it didn.t exactly send pleasing ripples through the Asian Communist country. In fact, the unofficial spokesman for Jong-un, Kim Myong-chol, released a slew of statements criticizing both the film, the larger film industry and the American government. North Korean supreme leaders have always had a strange relationship with movies. Back in 1978, the country.s dictator Kim II Sung had famed South Korean director Shin Sang-ok shoved into a car in Hong Kong and smuggled over the border. Why? Because he wanted to give him $3 million a year to make movies in North Korea. Sung.s son Kim Jong Il maintained an extensive library of DVDs, estimated to number...

Box office smash Hide and Seek to open festival; Kim Jee-woon to present his favourite short films.

The line-up of the 8th London Korean Film Festival (Nov 7-15) has been announced.

The programme includes contemporary Korean cinema titles, UK and European premieres of box office hits and retrospectives. It will also host several visiting directors and actors.

The festival’s Film Forum at London’s Korean Cultural Centre is also hoped to generate opportunities for filmmakers to meet and help foster links between South Korea and UK to encourage funding investment, co-productions and access to post production.

Screening will take place at major central London locations, such as the Odeon West End, but highlights of the programme will also travel to Oxford, Bradford and St. Andrews from Nov 16-22.

Opening/Closing films

The festival will open on Nov 7 with the European premiere of Hide and Seek.

First time director Huh Jung’s home invasion thriller was an...

Seoul, South Korea — For decades, South Korean film buffs thought all their country's moviemaking from the Korean War era was lost forever. And it would have been, but for one film wrapped in a cocoon of old newspapers, tucked inside a plastic bag and placed in a dark, dusty closet.

That film, "The Street of the Sun," got its first screening in six decades Tuesday, the 63th anniversary of the beginning of the war. Now digitally restored, it offers South Koreans a rare glimpse at how their ancestors lived amid the destruction and poverty of war.

The movie was the debut feature of Min Kyoung-sik, a South Korean director who took a camera to the streets of Daegu in 1952, while a stream of refugees poured in. The southeastern city was tucked behind a perimeter secured by U.S. and South Korean forces battling North Korea and China to the north.

Documentary is about filmmaking team whose lives are changed by Kim Jong-il.

Directors Rob Cannan (Three Miles North of Molkom) and Ross Adam are starting the shoot this week in Seoul for feature documentary The Lovers And The Despot.

The romantic story is about young filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee who built strong careers in post-war South Korea.

But when their careers are cut short after a scandal, they divorce and the actress is kidnapped by movie-obsessed Kim Jong-il and Shin is thrown into a North Korean concentration camp. They are reunited but with Kim dictating their career path.

The UK’s Tigerlily Films and Hellflower Film are producing in association with the Netherlands-based Submarine Films and France-based Pumpernickel Films.

The filmmaking team said: “With North Korea ever more present in the news, this is a timely film that will offer an insider’s perspective on the crazy world of the Kim dynasty...

When the humidity begins to turn all of your clothes into wet rags, you know summer has arrived in Korea, which also means that it's K-horror season in the nation's multiplexes. Though the country has a long history of horror going back to the films of Kim Ki-young (The Housemaid, 1960), Lee Man-hee (Black Hair, 1966) and Shin Sang-ok (A Thousand Year Old Fox, 1969), its modern incarnation began in 1998 with the first entry in the enduring Whispering Corridors series. Since then the industry has produced a large body of straight horror films that includes modern classics such as Memento Mori (1999), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and Possessed (2009), while many other works have also successfully implemented elements of horror, such as...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

We now live in a world where a 1985 monster movie is topical because of both nuclear sabre-rattling from North Korea and an upcoming Guillermo del Toro movie, and where you can see that movie thanks to the magic of the internet. Like almost anything related to North Korea, the Kim Jong-Il-produced Kaiju flick Pulgasari has a depressing beginning. In fact, it only exists because Kim had North Korean intelligence officers kidnap South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee. Held in captivity from 1978 to 1986, this was the last of seven movies that Shin was forced to make. In the film, a feudal King subjugates the lower classes to a life of misery, but a jailed peasant makes a doll out of rice that comes to life when it touches a drop of his daughter’s blood. As you’d expect (if you paid attention in middle school science class), this living doll hungers for...

Pyongyang, North Korea -- An international film festival opens Thursday in what may seem the unlikeliest of places: North Korea.

Held every two years, the Pyongyang International Film Festival offers North Koreans their only chance to see a wide array of foreign films on the big screen – from Britain, Germany and elsewhere (but not America). And it's the only time foreigners are allowed into North Korean theaters to watch movies alongside locals.

This year, festivalgoers will get the chance to see two feature films shot in North Korea but edited overseas: the romantic comedy "Comrade Kim Goes Flying," a joint North Korean-European production, and "Meet in Pyongyang," made in conjunction with a Chinese studio.

While it's true that homegrown movies predictably tend toward Communist propaganda with a healthy dose of tear-jerker, North Korea is a film-crazy country. Well-to-do residents pay as much as 500 won (about $5 according to official exchange rates...

Following the disastrous performance of Cj's high profile releases last year, such as Sector 7 and My Way, the assumption was that the company was going to rethink it's approach to blockbusters by focussing more on mid-level projects. Perhaps this is the case but I suppose R2B: Return to Base was already in production at this stage so they just grit their teeth and got on with it. It certainly feels that way as this new late summer action film feels like it was thrown together. What was initially a remake of the classic Shin Sang-ok feature Red Muffler (1964) starring Rain, the king of K-pop, wound up as a half-assed attempt at emulating an enormously popular and kitschy 80s American classic.  Earlier this week...

The North American arm of Korea distro house Cj Entertainment has really started to turn around some speedy U.S releases of their titles these days, and you won’t hear us complaining especially when it means we can get a dose of full on (over the top) action, and aerial action thriller R2B: Return to Base will fit the bill just perfectly thank you very much. Inspired by the 1963 South Korean film, Red Scarf by legendary director Shin Sang-ok, R2B: Return to Base is set in modern-day Seoul and features pop starlet Rain. The movie takes off in multiple locations across the U.S and Canada from August 24. Check out the shiny new official site, with trailers and pics galore..below. Synopsis: They have 7 minutes to pull off the most critical airborne mission in history. South Korean elite Air Force pilot Tae-hun is kicked out of his...

I was a sceptic; I thought it could not be done. I did not believe that London could host such an important global event, let alone pull it off with such grandiose confidence. But now the Olympics are over and to be honest, I don’t want it to end. Particularly considering my last images may be that of Jessie J ruining Queen, or Liam Gallagher proving he needs Noel. But with Britain standing 3rd in the medal rankings, we can be proud of our athletes’ efforts. Whether it was handball, hockey or dressage, my eyes were opened to the magic of the Olympics and I’m sad to see them go. So why not cling on for a little bit longer and join me as I attempt to blur the realms of Film and the Summer Olympics.

Every country has its stars, its athletes who we can look up...

The Korean Film Archive (Kofa) has announced that it is partnering with Google to put 70 classic Korean films on Youtube this May.

The free video-on-demand films with English subtitles will be available for streaming at www.youtube.com/koreanfilm.

The line-up of films include : Yun Yong-gyu’s 1949 film about a child monk, A Hometown in Heart Director Hong Sang-soo’s 1996 - The Day a Pig Fell in the Well Yu Hyun-mok’s Aimless Bullet Berlin Silver Bear award-winner A Coachman (1961) Kang Dae-jin Kim Ki-young’s 1971 classic Woman of Fire Shin Sang-ok’s A Flower in Hell (1958) Jang Sun-woo’s The Road to the Racetrack (1991) Im Kwon-taek’s Son of General (1990) Seopyonje> (1993) Kim Kee-duk’s The Barefooted Young (1964)

Read more at KoreanFilm...

It is no secret that recently deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il was something of a movie lover, and one can only wonder at what treasures and rare prints he may have stashed away in his private collection. "Dear Leader" was so keen to kick-start an industry of his own that he went so far as to have prolific South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok kidnapped and forced to make films in North Korea. The last of these, completed shortly before Shin and his wife were finally able to leave and seek refuge in the USA in 1986, was the monster movie Bulgasari, a blatant Godzilla rip off and anti-monarchy allegory. Based on a famous Korean legend, it is the story of a toy monster that comes...

Dictating Cinema

With the loss of North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il this week, the world must say goodbye to one of its most devoted film fans. Kim, who had a famous obsession with Elizabeth Taylor, was fascinated by the cultural power of cinema, calling it “a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and construction.” Despairing of the poor quality of his country's output, he arranged the kidnapping of one of his favourite South Korean directors, Shin Sang-ok, and his actress wife Choe Eun-hui, keeping them prisoner for several years and ordering them to make films,...

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is dead, and while the record of horrible things he inflicted upon the North Korean population is well documented, no one ever seems to mention Pulgasari in his seemingly never-ending list of atrocities. The 1985 monster movie stands as the most famous film to ever emanate from North Korea, which is ironic, since it was made by South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his actress-wife Choe Un-hee – who Kim Jong-il had kidnapped and imprisoned until they made this cult classic Kaiju flick for him. Website io9 ran a piece on the film awhile back, and have reprinted it to mark the dictator’s passing. It basically revolves around a giant iron-eating bull monster that helps peasants overthrow a tyrant king. Reportedly, it’s...

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AP In this March 1979 photo from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, distributed by Korea News Service, leader Kim Jong Il gives advice at the shooting of “An Jung Geun Avenges Hirobumi Ito,” a narrative film.

Kim Jong Il, who passed away Saturday after 14 years of absolute rule over the “hermit kingdom” of North Korea, will be remembered by history as an idiosyncratic despot and a capricious threat to world peace, but his personal eccentricities also made him...

From Team America: World Police (2004)

"The task set before the cinema today is one of contributing to people's development into true communists... This historic task requires, above all, a revolutionary transformation of the practice of directing."

That's from the preface of On the Art of Cinema (1973) by Kim Jong-il, North Korea's Dear Leader, who, as you'll have heard by now, died this weekend at the age of 69. His "love of the cinema bordered on the obsessive," notes the BBC in its obituary. "He is said to have collected a library of 20,000 Hollywood movies…. In 1978, he ordered the abduction of a South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee. They were held separately for five years before being reunited at a party banquet. They said afterwards that Mr Kim had apologized for the kidnappings and asked them to make movies for him. They completed seven before...

So, folks…I’ve been pretty lazy in my necessary duties as a staffer at the Liberal Dead. I don’t really pull my weight and even though I’m not doing this for pay or anything like that, I do feel consequences whenever I don’t pitch in. And it’s not because of my editors or anything—no, every single person at Liberal Dead is a great person who understands that I’m a busy man. I still feel like I have an obligation, however, to present my corner of weirdo horror cinema to you, the reader. As a result, it’s time for me to make it up to you. Simple sex won’t suffice. We’re going straight-out clusterfuck on this one. I present unto you as many reviews as I can do in one weekend, in one big, snappy package. I hope it’s enough.

There's usually a direct correlation between the health of a film industry and the amount of sequels it produces, at least when it comes to Chungmuro. Whereas you'd find the 60s littered with all sorts of franchises (from action to melodramas), all you could find in the 1990s of the pre-renaissance were timid attempts to bank on a hit's success, like in the case of 투캅스 (Two Cops) or the 깡패수업 (Hoodlum Lessons) series, which went from a Kitano-esque black comedy to a lurid straight-to-video nostalgia trip with "stars" of dubious relevance. It would be hard to call today's industry healthy, as the majority of films struggle to break even while two-three juggernauts by the majors break records left and right, but sequel fever has made its return in full force, and is likely to become one of the leading trends of 2010, for better or worse.

Projects like 괴물2 (The...