Park Jae-dong (박재동)

Feast on "fattened-up" independent animations!

Source | 2006/10/30 | Permalink |

Independent animations are rich in experimental spirit, passion, and vision.

The 2006 INDI-ANIFEST (Chair of the Organization Committee: Lee, Yong-Bae), the only independent animation festival in Korea hosted by the Korean Association of Independent Animation (President: Lee, Yong-Bae) and the Korea Culture and Content Agency (KOCCA, CEO: Suh, Byung-Moon) took off from Oct. 27 to 31 at the Seoul Animation Center.

Celebrating its second year, the five-day festival has the theme "Cheon-Go-Ani-Bi", which means blue sky and the fact that independent animations are becoming much better, opened with a grand ceremony at 7 PM on Oct. 27, with its schedule full of exciting events.

This year's festival, in particular, introduced a new section called "Public Animation", which screens a total of 14 Korean and foreign public animations including If You were Me : Anima Vision (Park Jae-Dong, and others). The Public Animation includes those animations that tackle social issues and pursue pu...| More

`If You Were Me': Animations With a Conscience

Source | 2005/09/22 | Permalink |

By Joon Soh
Culture Editor

Two years ago, the Human Rights Commission of Korea funded six directors to make short films about discrimination. The result, titled "If You Were Me", was an insightful collection of works that looked at such diverse topics as the plight of the disabled, obsession with physical appearance and the mistreatment of migrant workers.

The film received critical praise and invitations to local and international festivals, and despite a noticeable lack of commercial success, the commission decided to fund two sequels to the project: "If You Were Me 2" and "If You Were Me : Anima Vision".

"If You Were Me : Anima Vision", released in theaters today, brings together six different animators and animation teams to tackle issues similar to the original film. None of the directors involved are what you would call popular on the mainstream level, but then again, there really isn't any animation filmmaker in Korea who is.

The most familiar name here would probab...| More

Omnibus films, 'If you were me' covers the issue of human rights

Source | 2005/09/06 | Permalink |

A continuation of the human rights omnibus films commissioned by the Korea Human Rights Commission, but this time with six short animated works.

"If you were me (Byeol-byeol iyagi)" is to be release on 23 September.

Directed by six noted animation directors who are Lee Seong-gang (My Beautiful Girl, Mari), Park Jae-dong (the director who was scheduled to work with Jang Sun-woo on the never-produced Princess Bari), Yoo Jin-hee (short A Fine Day), Kwon Oh-seong (Doggy Poo) and Amy Lee, the works have been planned and produced since 2002 to boosts social awareness about abolitionof discrimination.

In that the phrase 'Byeol-byeol' means 'all sorts of' in Korean, the animation deals with discrimination against various kinds such as race, physical trouble or appearance, alien, and academic background. This omnibus film is a compilation of six short films of varying lengths and moods by noted feature filmmakers.

The film first debuted as the opener at the Jeonju International ...| More