Short Glimpses of Korea
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Short film festival in Berlin shows movies from South Korea
Jan Creutzenberg (RhusHeesen)
It is not too hard to watch some Korean movies in Germany these days. Some play in cinemas, more are sold on DVD. But while the major feature films are generally available, short films are harder to get a hold of.
The 23rd International Short Film Festival in Berlin, which took place last week, tried to close this gap: In collaboration with two film schools (Korean Academy of Film Arts and Korean National University of Arts), the Korean Film Council (a governmental organization for promoting Korea's film industry) and IndieStory (Korea's only distribution company dedicated to independent film), a special section dedicated to short films from South Korea was shown. From over 350 entries, four thematic programs were chosen, of which I saw two.
Everything has to be destroyed: Miscommunication, disappointment and separated body parts were recurring motives in many films. The seven movies of the program "Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice" dealt with more or less hopeless love affairs. "Atomic Punch, My Darling" (Sun Jee-yeon) was a rare exception in so far as the relationship actually took place. But here, the woman tries to get rid of her drunk of an ex-boyfriend, using increasingly brutal methods.
But mostly possible contacts do not even occur: The kisses a girl in "Fragile" (Kim Eun-kyung) shares with a boy from another high school class exist only in her daydreams. "The Anonymous Man" (Ryu Hyung-ki) will never see the woman he talks to on the phone. And in "Inside" (Park In-chul), a seller of lottery tickets is trapped in her small sales-box in a subway corridor, seeing only her customer's hands. As she is turned down, her revenge is a bloody one.
"Family" seems to be a rather virulent topic in contemporary Korean filmmaking: 80 percent of all entries dealt with it in one way or another. The program "Home … or: Where the Fear Grows" focused on the darker sides of family life and presented several bizarre, sometimes macabre ways of handling problems. Apart from the light-hearted animation of "Wolf Daddy" (Chang Hyung-yun), which gained notoriety in numerous festivals around the world, all the families depicted seemed more or less like families from hell.
In "Home Sweet Home" (Um Hye-jung) the little daughter mysteriously returns home after she is killed in a fire. In spooky scenes the parents and her brother try to deal with what has happened, always knowing that something is terribly wrong. In "Family Size Pizza" (Gim Gyung-mi) daddy's new girlfriend uses food to get the sympathy of his little daughter, but the girl refuses to integrate and takes the pizza with her. "The Freaking Family" (Park Jae-young, Park Soo-young) is virtually atomized in its anticipation of a nuclear attack from North Korea.
A highlight was "Tool" (Yoon Yong-a), a film about a little girl who, in order to condemn her mom's smoking habits, locks herself in a car and starts eating ant poison. Director Yoon, who was present at the festival, told the audience about the origins of this 8-minute film: When a new set of film equipment had to be tested, he remembered a brief story one of his friends had told him years ago at dinner. In two days, shooting was completed. The success of "Tool", which has been shown at various festivals, took him by surprise.
The Web site of the 23rd International Short Film Festival in Berlin shows the full program (in English).
http://www.interfilm.de/festival2007/index_eng.php
©2007 OhmyNews
Jan Creutzenberg (RhusHeesen)
It is not too hard to watch some Korean movies in Germany these days. Some play in cinemas, more are sold on DVD. But while the major feature films are generally available, short films are harder to get a hold of.
The 23rd International Short Film Festival in Berlin, which took place last week, tried to close this gap: In collaboration with two film schools (Korean Academy of Film Arts and Korean National University of Arts), the Korean Film Council (a governmental organization for promoting Korea's film industry) and IndieStory (Korea's only distribution company dedicated to independent film), a special section dedicated to short films from South Korea was shown. From over 350 entries, four thematic programs were chosen, of which I saw two.
Everything has to be destroyed: Miscommunication, disappointment and separated body parts were recurring motives in many films. The seven movies of the program "Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice" dealt with more or less hopeless love affairs. "Atomic Punch, My Darling" (Sun Jee-yeon) was a rare exception in so far as the relationship actually took place. But here, the woman tries to get rid of her drunk of an ex-boyfriend, using increasingly brutal methods.
But mostly possible contacts do not even occur: The kisses a girl in "Fragile" (Kim Eun-kyung) shares with a boy from another high school class exist only in her daydreams. "The Anonymous Man" (Ryu Hyung-ki) will never see the woman he talks to on the phone. And in "Inside" (Park In-chul), a seller of lottery tickets is trapped in her small sales-box in a subway corridor, seeing only her customer's hands. As she is turned down, her revenge is a bloody one.
"Family" seems to be a rather virulent topic in contemporary Korean filmmaking: 80 percent of all entries dealt with it in one way or another. The program "Home … or: Where the Fear Grows" focused on the darker sides of family life and presented several bizarre, sometimes macabre ways of handling problems. Apart from the light-hearted animation of "Wolf Daddy" (Chang Hyung-yun), which gained notoriety in numerous festivals around the world, all the families depicted seemed more or less like families from hell.
In "Home Sweet Home" (Um Hye-jung) the little daughter mysteriously returns home after she is killed in a fire. In spooky scenes the parents and her brother try to deal with what has happened, always knowing that something is terribly wrong. In "Family Size Pizza" (Gim Gyung-mi) daddy's new girlfriend uses food to get the sympathy of his little daughter, but the girl refuses to integrate and takes the pizza with her. "The Freaking Family" (Park Jae-young, Park Soo-young) is virtually atomized in its anticipation of a nuclear attack from North Korea.
A highlight was "Tool" (Yoon Yong-a), a film about a little girl who, in order to condemn her mom's smoking habits, locks herself in a car and starts eating ant poison. Director Yoon, who was present at the festival, told the audience about the origins of this 8-minute film: When a new set of film equipment had to be tested, he remembered a brief story one of his friends had told him years ago at dinner. In two days, shooting was completed. The success of "Tool", which has been shown at various festivals, took him by surprise.
The Web site of the 23rd International Short Film Festival in Berlin shows the full program (in English).
http://www.interfilm.de/festival2007/index_eng.php
©2007 OhmyNews
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