London Korean Film Festival 2011It’s been a bumper week for festival’s, as the London Korean Film Festival 2011 announced it’s opening gala film, and some of the other titles we can look forward to this November.

(Feels like you wait a whole year, then all of a sudden…)

The festival kicks-off with an opening gala featuring Kim Han-min’s Arrow The Ultimate Weapon, a Q&A with the director, and a K Pop performance! The closing film will be the UK premiere of Director Kim Ki-duk’s controversial documentary, Arirang, in which he explains his three year absence from filmmaking, followed by a Q&A.

This year’s programme sees a North & South Korean film strand, a Ryoo Seung Retrospective, a light hearted comedy films section, an Animation day and Mise en scene short films, all taking place in London at the Cineworld Haymarket, Apollo and ICA cinemas, and on tour nationally in Sheffield, Cambridge and Newcastle.

The North & South strand incudes: The European premiere of Poongsan, a fast paced thriller written by Kim Ki-Duk and the debut feature directed by his protegé Juhn Jai-hong about a young man who is tasked with a secret mission by South Korean government agents to bring over the lover of a highranking North Korean defector. LKFF presents the European premiere of The Front Line, a popular action drama set towards the end of the Korean war, sees the fight for a strategic territory that would come to determine the border between North and South Korea. The award-winning drama, Journals of Musan (UK premiere), directed by and starring Park Jung-Bum (assistant to Lee Chang-Dong on the acclaimed film Poetry), is a profound tale of a North Korean defector attempting to start a new life on the outskirts of Seoul. Jeon Kyu-hwan’s third film Dance Town (UK premiere), follows the ambivalent migration of former North Korean national table tennis player Jung-rim (Ra Mi-ran, who won Best Actress at PIFF) as she heads to South Korea.

This year LKFF turns the spotlight on to Ryoo Seung-wan, a prolific filmmaker and actor who, despite wide distribution of his work, is still little known in the UK. Inspired by Hong Kong action and Jackie Chan films, Ryoo Seung became known as ‘the action kid’ upon his directorial debut, Die Bad (2000), an acclaimed four part action film made on a shoe string budget. This retrospective which sees him in attendance, will include the UK premiere of his commercially and critically successful new film about a dirty chain of corruption between the police and prosecuters, The Unjust; City of Violence (2006) about a detective fighting organised crime; and his first major studio film, No Blood No Tears (2002) among others from his cannon including Dachimawa Lee (2008) and Crying Fist (2005).

LKFF brings a selection of the best light hearted comedies including: Sunny, South Korea’s box office record holder to date, about a girls’ friendship group, and starring K Pop stars to boot. Two other comedy films screening include Suicide Forecast about a baseball player come high flying insurance advisor and Detective K a comedy about a series of mysterious murders.

Animation season curated by KOCCA (Korean Creative Content Agency) brings a selection of popular children and animation films, alluding to the growth of the genre in Korean cinema to date. A highlight among others so far confirmed is Leafie, A Hen to the Wild, based on a pre-teen best selling novel, the film boasts the biggest celebrity voice animation in Korea to date, with Choi Min-shik (star of Old Boy) as the lead.

Mise-En-Scene shorts include a range of short films selected by the prestigious Mise En Scene Film Festival including 2nd place Berlin short film award winner, Broken Night about car crash fraud, and director Park Chan-wook’s (Oldboy) short, Paranmanjan (Night Fishing) – famously shot entirely on an iPhone (but with a normal size film crew?), which won a Golden Bear award at this year’s Berlinale.

In honour of this, the LKFF will also be running a One Minute Short Film competition, open to anyone to enter. More information on the competition can be found on koreanfilm.co.uk, including rules and handy tips to get your film on the big screen. Deadline Noon Monday 17th October 2011.

There will also be a number of events including director Masterclasses and a night dedicated to the UK’s distributors to be confirmed.

» The festival runs from 3 to 17 November 2011. More information can be found on the official site of the festival.

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This entry was published by Andy H on Friday, September 9th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under Events, Festivals, Filmmakers, News, Premieres, Screenings, South Korea, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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