[KS] 5th Korean Film Festival in Iowa City
yung-kwak at uiowa.edu
yung-kwak at uiowa.edu
Wed Apr 14 23:48:48 EDT 2004
Welcome to the 5th Korean Film Festival(April 23rd-25th)!
For the past 5 years, Kolors has presented an intriguing, sometimes
provocative collection of contemporary Korean films to not only Iowans but
also some fervent Midwest filmgoers outside Iowa, and thereby is now an
irreplaceable event in Iowa.
To our joy, during the same period, Korean Cinema began receiving its long
overdue international recognition; Im Kwon-Taek and Lee Chang-Dong have won
the prestigious award for Best Director respectively at the Cannes Film
Festival in 2002 and at the Venice Film Festival in the same year. And most
recently, Kim Ki-Duk won the Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival
this year, the equivalent to the aforementioned award for Best Director.
In further uplifting this upbeat spirit, this years festival will be filled
with even more exciting films, including notably, Im Kwon-Taeks highly
enjoyable- yet rarely seen abroad- action film [Generals Son](1990) in
gorgeous 35mm print! Were also excited to announce that special talks will be
given by top-notch film scholars- Jung Bong Choi (UC, Santa Barbara), Frances
Gateward (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign), and Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (NYU) on
contemporary Korean and Japanese cinema on Saturday afternoon (4:30PM,
4.24.04).
In line with the theme of this years festival, that is, to look at how
contemporary Korean and Japanese cinemas remember each other, or, in
particular, the colonial memory as such,* we have gathered various films
ranging from documentaries ([The Murmuring], [In the Name of the Emperor]),
historical comedies ([YMCA Baseball Team]), science-fiction ([2009 Lost
Memories]) to military thrillers ([Phantom, The Submarine]). Also worth noting
here is [815 (Hachi-Ichi-Go)], an intriguing Japanese film by Chugoku Shoichi,
which was premiered last fall at the Vancouver International Film Festival and
won Special Mention for its provocative depiction of contemporary Japan.
Though none of the films should not be missed, I would strongly recommend for
the general audiences and families to watch [YMCA Baseball Team] on Friday
night (8:00); [Generals Son] for film students and scholars or anyone who
heard about Im Kwon-Taek and who doesnt want to miss this rare and unique
chance to see Im Kwon-Taeks action film given his now established status as
an artistic director; [The Murmuring] for those who want to see in person,
if you will, how colonial memory remains as the present pasts not only for
Koreans but also for Japanese; [815] for those whod like to approach the
issue from a totally different point of view and are stoic enough to bear with
the silent yet definitely far from a serene intermission that will last
exactly for 8 minutes and 15 seconds during the screening.
Well, now you cant wait until next weekend? Then, visit our website for more
information on the festival and films (http://www.digitdream.com/kolors) and
leave your own trace on the message board.
Ill see you ALL next weekend!
Kwak Yung-Bin
Executive Programming Director of
Korean Film Festival at University of Iowa (3rd~)
Ph.D. Student, Film Studies
Dept. of Cinema and Comparative Literature
University of Iowa
H) 319-353-4894
C) 319-530-5104
* This event is made possible by the generous funds
provided by:
Center for Asian Pacific Studies (CAPS)
Institute for Cinema and Culture (ICC)
International Programs (IP)
International Writing Program (IWP)
For a full list of sponsors, check our website.
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5th Korean Film Festival at the University of Iowa
Far Away So Close:
The Present Pasts in Contemporary Korean
And Japanese Cinema
Schedule
Date Time Program
April 23rd (Fri)5:00PM [2009 Lost Memories] (2002)
8:00PM [YMCA Baseball Team] (2003)
April 24th (Sat)11:00AM [The Murmuring] (1994)
2:00 PM [815 (Hachi-Ichi-Go)] (2003)
4:30PM Public Symposium on
Korean and Japanese Cinema with
Jung-Bong Choi
(U. of California, Santa Barbara)
Frances Gateward
(U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign)
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (NYU)
7:30PM Im Kwon-Taeks [Generals Son] (1990)
April 25th (Sun)2:00PM [In the Name of the Emperor] (1995)
3:30PM [Phantom, The Submarine] (1999)
* Note: All screenings are at 101 BCSB
(Beckers Communication Studies Building)
JUNG-BONG CHOI is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of
California at Santa Barbara. His works interweave sociological paradigms with
critical and cultural theories. His interests include the political economy of
globalization, postmodern humanity in digital media, and post-colonial
cultural geography in East Asia. He was the organizer of an International
conference titled "Unsettling East Asia, Interrogating Communication" in 2001.
His works have been published in Social Identities, Journal of International
Communication, and Journal of Communication Inquiry. He is currently co-
editing a book dedicated to contemporary Japanese television.
FRANCES GATEWARD is an Associate Professor of Unit for Cinema Studies and the
Program in Comparative and World Literature, Affiliate in the Afro-American
Studies and Research Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland College
Park. Her areas of research are African American film and popular culture,
post-colonial film, and Korean cinema. She is the editor of Zhang Yimou:
Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2001), co-editor of Sugar, Spice,
and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood (Wayne State University, 2002) and
notably Korean Cinema (Oxford Press, 2004).
MITSUHIRO YOSHIMOTO is an Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at New
York University. The fields of his specialization are film studies and
critical theory. He has an MA in film studies from the University of
California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the
University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the book Kurosawa:
Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Duke University Press, 2000), which is
acclaimed by Fredric Jameson as a grand performance sustained by a voice of
rare authority, and numerous articles in English and Japanese on Japanese
film, television, Hollywood cinema, postmodernism, among others.
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