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‘New Korean Cinema’ is on hiatus….. pretty much…
It feels like I should write this post from the inside of a tent in a log cabin in the middle of a quiet and snowy rural area while drinking coffee from a home-made expresso machine and eating freshly caught fish… For the last few months there has been a…
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Help Kickstart funding for ‘Remember O Goddess’
You may well have seen or heard of Kickstarter campaigns before now – if you haven’t they’re basically a way of crowd-funding projects online – and there’s plenty of exciting projects being put together by a whole lot of interesting and talented people. One of those interesting and talented people…
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Unstable States . . . Park Kwang-su Night at the 12 Directors
Park Kwang-su, the former deputy director of the Busan International Film Festival—now fifty-seven years old, and a dean in the National University of Arts’ Department of Filmmaking—was settling onto a stool between two bright banner stands promoting the third event in ‘The Year Of The 12 Directors’ series. There was…
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The Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2012
The Terracotta Film Festival returns this Thursday (12th April) for another great mix of screenings at the Prince Charles Cinema in London. This years line-up include four films from South Korea – Kang Je-kyu’s epic My Way, Kim Ki-duk’s Arirang, the romantic comedy Couples and the smash-hit Dancing Queen. Other…
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Film Recommendations – Fifteen Films of the New Korean Cinema (Part Two)
This is Part two of a list of Fifteen Films of the New Korean Cinema – Part One of this list can be found here Friend (Kwak Kyung-taek, 2001) A good example of the type of Korean films that started to explode at the domestic box-office and helped encourage an…
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Film Recommendations – Fifteen Films of the New Korean Cinema (Part One)
Although I’ll admit that I’m not a big fan of ‘best of’ lists I do recognise that they can often be a shortcut into a subject that the reader may not be familiar with. One the questions I was asked recently by a reader of the site was to suggest…
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The Return of ‘East Winds: A Third Window Film Festival’
Following last years very successful debut, Third Window Films and Coventry University East Asian Film Society are once again presenting East Winds: A Third Window Film Festival from 2nd – 4th of March. Last years event was a great success with six films screened including Confessions (Tetsuya Nakashima 2010), Kick the Moon (Sang-jin…
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Guest Post: My Dear Enemy (Lee Yoon-ki, 2008)
If money problems can force people apart, they can also bring them together again. At least that is the premise of Lee Yoon-ki‘s My Dear Enemy, a low-key romance that uses the collection of an overdue personal loan to initiate a will they/won’t they situation between two former lovers. The…
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“Introduce what they have missed”: An Interview with Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso
Reviewed recently here on the site, Through Korean Cinema is a fascinating documentary that examines the history of the Korean film industry through the perspectives and experiences of five influential filmmakers. Having recently appeared at several international festivals, Through Korean Cinema will appear on DVD in 2012. Director Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso…
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“It’s technically very difficult getting a tiger into a film:” a conversation on Kim Han-min and his film, War of the Arrows
“It was the one military practice, the one token of martial skill, which ever held its own among a people who for thousands of years have preferred silks, pictures, poems and music, the stately crane in the paddy fields and the knarled [sic] pine on the mountainside.” —Historian J. L….
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“Only strong as the challenges you face”: Interview with John H. Lee
With 71 – Into The Fire recently released on DVD and Blu-ray (read our review here), we had the opportunity to ask director John H. Lee a few questions about the film… [Martin Cleary] 71: Into The Fire is based on real events. Was it ever difficult to walk a…
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DVD Review: 71 Into the Fire (Cine-Asia, Region 2)
Format: PAL, Anamorphic, Widescreen, Subtitled Audio: Korean 5.1 / Korean 2.0 Subtitles: English Region: Region 2 Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Number of Discs: 2 Classification: 15 Distribution: Cine-Asia Run Time: 116 minutes (approx.) Special Features: Audio Commentary by Bey Logan & Mike Leeder / Trailer Gallery / Men of Valour, Personal…