CoMo No. 5: South Korea (September, 2022)

[niminy-piminy]

THE HUT (Lee Doo-yong, 1981) #CoMoSoKo

When Ok-hwa becomes possessed by a spirit and the bitterness of generations of women burns within her, she sets out to make life difficult for everyone in the village.

https://youtu.be/Xp-5r9y_KNM

[sally]

merry christmas mr. mo - lim dae-hyung (2016) #CoMoSoKo

veeeeery sentimental

[niminy-piminy]

AN EMPTY DREAM (Yu Hyun-mok, 1965) #CoMoSoKo

A young man and a woman come to know each other while being treated at a dentist's. They are put under anesthesia and in their unconsciousness, they fall into a love triangle with the dentist like in a dream. In the extremity of happiness and misfortune, they experience the transcendence of time and space and fulfill their lust.

Korean remake of a Japanese Pinko film released the previous year. In the hands of a master director, Yoo Hyeon Mok, it deviates from the original softcore titillation and instead presents a dizzying surreal flight of fantasy.

This movie is actually very weird — unlike most films that people say are weird, which are not. The opening dance number has a strange almost demonic power to it.

https://youtu.be/-TC23tePlAc

[sally]

can confirm this film is truly bonkers! what it loses in porn from the japanese version it makes up for in whimsical, surreal, expressionist sets. mad.

definitely worth watching ♥

think käutner's apple tree but with dentists and more horniness

[niminy-piminy]

THE NOVELIST'S FILM (Hong Sang-soo, 2022) #CoMoSoKo



PIG IRON (James Benning, 2010) #CoMoSoKo

In 2000, Jeonju, a small town in the North Jeolla Province of South Korea known for traditional crafts, became home to a very forward-thinking film festival. The Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF), held each spring, has emerged as a major independent and art-house film festival that not shows only great films but also funds them. Every year, since 2000, the festival has awarded three international filmmakers with 50 million won (US $44,500) each, to make a 30–minute digital film.

This year’s (2010) Jeonju Film Festival offered up James Benning smelting more Duisburger experience

Benning’s Digital snapshot, Pig Iron, which he dubbed a “found narrative,” stares at a rail dock for loading iron from a furnace. (A periodic siren suggests it might be the base of the monolithic structure in the final shot of his latest film, Ruhr.) Sherbet-orange sparks and heat shimmering over carts illuminate the center of the image, framed by the steelwork’s massive girders.

https://youtu.be/y95YtUZqkDk

[niminy-piminy]

NOTHING SERIOUS (Ga-Young Jeong, 2021) #CoMoSoKo

Through her first three features in which she also played the lead, Jeong Ga-young had established herself as a provocative indie voice casting herself as an often unsympathetic if transgressively frank heroine contending with the vagaries of modern society. Nothing Serious, by contrast, marks her debut as a commercial film director and perhaps softens some of her harsher edges...

[niminy-piminy]

there are a few more days left to try a doc from my homeland that fits both September CoMo and September Year Poll
(lbox 2011 BUT imdb and the local databases 2010)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1776798/
not gonna rewatch ALL FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD AND NOSOVICE! but maybe someone...

https://letterboxd.com/film/all-for-the ... -nosovice/

An original portrayal of a small Czech village where – as the locals put it – an UFO has landed in the form of a kilometre-long silverish factory: a Korean Hyundai automobile plant. The village, hitherto famous mostly for its sauerkraut and the “Radegast” beer was thus turned into an industrial zone – the largest greenfield investment project in the Czech Republic’s history. Nonetheless, for a long time many farmers resisted selling the land upon which the factory was now standing. Eventually, they all succumbed under the pressure from the neighbours, and even the anonymous death threats. The filmmakers returned to Nošovice two years after the dramatic property buyouts, at the time when the factory has just started churning out cheap cars. Combining the perspectives of seven characters, they have composed a portrayal of a place suddenly changed beyond recognition that is playful and chilling at the same time: a politically engaged absurd flick about a field that yields cars.

(trailer with English subs)
https://youtu.be/hfuQC1RoUAE

[niminy-piminy]

INTRODUCTION (Hong Sang-soo, 2021) #CoMoSoKo

Youngho comes to visit his father at his clinic, but spends his time waiting. Juwon moves to Berlin to study fashion design and finds a room in the apartment of her mother’s friend. Two seemingly unrelated stories. Or do they have something in common? In Hong Sangsoo’s latest look at ordinary life situations, each episode represents a new beginning. The winner of the Best Screenplay award in Berlin, Introduction touches lightly on the line separating reality from acting and dream. Encounters framed by cigarette breaks initially feel like mere polite formalities. Slowly, however, the film piles on the weight of ambiguity where even an innocent embrace between a man and a woman can prove fateful.

an airy 66-minute sampler of everything the Korean director’s fans admire, which is coincidentally everything his detractors dislike

The black-and-white “Introduction,” on which he (Hong Sang-soo) acts for the first time as his own cinematographer (in addition to directing, writing, editing and composing the plaintive little ditty that sounds out at the halfway point), is not as funny as “Woman.” It sadly does not feature a cat who can apparently yawn on cue. But as recompense, it has a little more gravity to it, which makes it perhaps less peripheral and more integral to Hong’s ongoing, addictive project.

Motifs recur: Characters offer each other herbal tonics and cough drops, cigarettes and soju.

[sally]

a tiger in winter - lee kwang-kuk (2017)

horrific scenes in korean cinema!

[thoxans]

someone post some hong sang-soo downloads/links in resources cuz i wanna revel in booze, discussion, and sadness

pls and thx

[rischka]

someone post some hong sang-soo downloads/links in resources cuz i wanna revel in booze, discussion, and sadness

pls and thx

i have hill of freedom, the day after and the woman who ran but if you send me yr email i can invite you to avistaz where they have all this and more