[KS] korean films

[Kyung Hyun Kim]

Dear Mr. Goodwin and Korean Studies, 
Patricia Levin is hardly a person to contact on Korean cinema.  I think you
may have been misinformed because we, Prof. Chungmoo Choi and myself at
University of California at Irvine, had put together a big Korean film
festival.  Then, Ms. Levin was working for the UC Irvine Film and Video
Center as a programmer, a position she no longer holds.  
If you have any specific questions on Korean cinema, I will attempt to
address them.  (I usually handle quite a few inquiries on Korean cinema
every month, so I can't promise I will be prompt, but I will try my best.) 

Also, for those of you in the Southern California area, Kim Ki-young films
are back.  
They will be screened first at UCLA in October, and UCI will host two
films, The Housemaid (encore screening) and The Insect Woman in early
November.  (They will be announced again.)

Please contact Brian Garrido (bgarrido at emelnitz.ucla.edu) for more info.

Thank you.
Kyung Hyun Kim			





For Immediate Release
(310) 206-8588	(PRESS INQUIRIES ONLY)				September 1, 1999

UCLA FILM AND TELEVISION ARCHIVE PRESENTS
THE DIABOLICAL CINEMA OF KIM KI YOUNG

Co-sponsored by the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles

October 16 - 28, 1999

LOS ANGELES - UCLA Film and Television Archive presents THE DIABOLICAL
CINEMA OF KIM KI YOUNG, October 16 - 28, 1999. Since his rediscovery
at the Pusan International Film Festival in 1997, director Kim
Ki-Young's films have been called everything from deviant to grotesque
and he has emerged as an exceptional figure in South Korean cinema.
The Archive will present the only five English-subtitled prints that
exist of Kim Ki-Young features including KILLER BUTTERFLY (1978), THE
HOUSEMAID (1960) and IODO (1977). All screenings take place at the
James Bridges Theater located on the northeast corner of UCLA's campus
(nearest cross streets are Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue in
Westwood.)

 Kim Ki-Young (1919 - 1998) had a long filmmaking career, spanning the
 50's to the 80's. After an early realist period, he began to turn out
 horror-melodramas that dispensed with the sentimentality then favored
 in South Korean film. Instead of classical Korean values of balance
 and harmony, Kim opted for gothic excess, earning the moniker "Mr.
 Monster". Kim's films are a potent cinematic brew of surrealism,
 sexual perversity and domestic melodrama and have been called
 everything from deviant to "Douglas Sirk on acid" by film scholar
 Chris Berry. 

 Kim's films lob extreme zooms and bizarre plots like so many night
 flares illuminating the hidden recesses of the grotesque. KILLER
 BUTTERFLY (1978) alone offers up a veritable menagerie of weirdness,
 from the peculiar cast of characters to the brazenly illogical turns
 of the plot. THE HOUSEMAID (1960), the first of the director's series
 of melodramas about middle-class families destroyed by greed and
 paranoia. In IODO (1977) more crisis ensues around the threat of a
 resort development on an ancestral, rustic society.

 Yet for all their outrageousness, Kim's films manifest many aspects
 of South Korea's postwar reality. Their highly charged eroticism
 pitting male sexual fantasies against predatory women can be seen as
 symbolic metaphors playing out the massive social and psychological
 dislocations wrought by the country's rapid industrialization in the
 60's and the 70's. Thus as eccentric a stylist as he was, Kim can
 also be regarded as a director who captured the chaotic pulse of his
 time. In a strange echo of the violent deaths that populate his
 films, Kim and his wife died in a house fire a year after his movies,
 most of which she financed, were rediscovered at the Pusan festival.

  Tickets for the film series are available one hour before showtime
  at the James Bridges Theater. Admission is $6 general and $4 for
  students and seniors. Please list this number for further public
  information, (310) 206 - FILM or visit our website at
  www.cinema.ucla.edu.





PAGE 2 -  UCLA/KIM KI YOUNG

Programming at the UCLA Film and Television Archive is made possible
by grants from the California Arts Council, the City of Los Angeles
Cultural Affairs Department, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and other sponsors.
All films are in Korean with English subtitles. 

Saturday, October 16, 1999 - 7:30 PM
KILLER BUTTERFLY (Salinnabiul Jonun Yoza)(1978, South Korea, Woojin
Films, 35mm, 110 min.) Screenplay: Lee Mun-Woong. Cinematography: Lee
Sung-Chun. Starring: Kim Jung-Chol, Kim Man, Kim Cha-Ok.

Sunday, October 17, 1999 - 7:00 PM
THE HOUSEMAID (Hayo)(1960, South Korea, Korea Munye Films, 35mm, 90
min.) Screenplay: Kim Ki-Young. Cinematography: Kim Tok-Chin. Starring
Lee Un-Shim, Chu Jung-Nyo, Kim Chin-Kyu

THE INSECT WOMAN (Chungyo)(1972, South Korea, Hallip Films, 35mm, 110
min.) Screenplay: Kim Ki-Young., Kim Sung-Ok. Cinematography: Chung
Il-Song. Starring Won Nam-Gung,  Yun Yo-Jung, Chon Kye-Hyon.

Thursday, October 28, 1999 - 7:30 PM
IODO (1977, South Korea, Dong-Ah Export Co., 35mm, 110 min.) Based on
the novel by Lee Chung-Jun. Screenplay: Yu Sang. Cinematography: Chung
Il-Song. Starring Lee Hwa-Si, Kim Jong-Chol, Choi Yun-Sok.

PROMISE OF THE FLESH (Yukcheui Yaksok)(1975, South Korea, Dong-Ah
Export Co., 35mm,  95 min.)  Based on a novel by Lee Man-Hee.
Screenplay: Kim Chi-Hon.  Cinematography:  Chung Il-Song.  Starring
Kim Ji-Mi, Lee Jung-Kil, Park Jung-Ja.    

- UCLA -



At 02:25 PM 9/3/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Ji-Yeon:
>
>Regarding your film query (and to quote Frank Hoffmann):
>
>"The 'Korean Film Archive' in Korea has an outstanding online database. It is
>searchable, of course. http://cinematheque.or.kr/"
>
>P.S. I have communicated with the web master at the KFA and he was very
>helpful!
>As well, you might try to contact the following person for more detailed help
>re. finding films here in North America:
>
>Patricia Levin
>Assistant Director
>Film and Video Center
>University of California, Irvine
>HIB 214
>Irvine, CA 92697-3535
>
>(714) 824-7418/ fvc at benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu
>http://www.humanities.uci.edu/fvc
>
>Cheers
>
>Mike Goodwin
>(Greenville, NC)
>
>Yuh Ji-Yeon wrote:
>
>> this is for a friend who isn't on this list.
>>
>> can anyone recommend some Korean
>> movies which deal with the experience of Korean women, peasants or the
>> working class during the 'korean miracle'? it would be best if the movies
>> are available in the u.s. with english subtitles. information on how to
>> obtain them would also be appreciated.
>>
>> thank you.
>>
>> yuh ji-yeon
>
>




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