[KS] Chonju Int'l. Film Festival 4/28-5/4

[Walter K. Lew]

For those of you who can make it, the First Chonju (Cholla Puk-do)
International Film Festival will be held April 28-May 4.  The schedule is
accessible in English at <http://www.ciff.org/english/schedule/> and in
Korean at <http://www.ciff.org/korean/schedule/>.  It is tremendously
packed: each one of the 4 or 5 three-hour slots per day (from 11:00 am to
midnight) will have *nine* events or screenings (over 40 per day) running
simultaneously at nine venues around the city.  It is also only a one-hour
drive away from the Kwangju Biennale for the Arts.

In an effort to draw up a new map of world cinema, the festival's
"Cinemascape" program will show a total of 188 films from 23 different
nations.

Other activities and screenings include recent Korean films and video, a
forum for independent filmmakers from all around Asia, retrospectives of
the films of Hou Hsiao Hsien, Chantal Akerman, and Aleksander Sokurov,
alternative classics never shown before in Korea (such as the work of Dziga
Vertov), a new animation festival, and an international scholarly symposium
(and that's just part of it!).

Confirmed invitees include Hou Hsiao Hsien, Hong Sang-su, Jia Zhang Ke, Yu
Lik Wai, Suwa Nobuhiro, Yaguchi Shinobu, Zhang Yuan, and Pak Kwang-su,
among other directors and producers.

The festival is curated by Korean film theorist/critic/director Kim
So-young and the symposium is organized by An Jinsoo, a doctoral student in
film at UCLA. This year the symposium addresses the topics of (1)
trans-cultural aspects of Asian cinema and (2) new digital media.

A rare treat will be a brand-new "movietelling" performance developed by
Shin Ch'ul, the only surviving Korean pyOnsa (benshi in Japanese), of Todd
Browning's 1927 silent "The Unknown."  Its star, Lon Chaney, was once a
favorite among Korean moviegoers. (I'm opening for him w the English
movietelling of "KOmsa wa yOsOnsaeng" [1948] that I did at Columbia U. last
September.)

For more and diverse information (including Chonju cuisine recipes!), go to
the website <www.ciff.org> (you can shortcut to the *schedules* by using
the URLs I gave above) or call: 0652-255-3800 (Chonju office) or
02-777-3133 (Seoul office).  The festival's e-mail address is:
<alt2k at unitel.co.kr>.


Walter K. Lew
11811 Venice Blvd.  #138
Los Angeles, CA  90066





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