New Yorkers will be able to taste a series of artistic Korean movies made by director Kim Ki-duk from Wednesday (Apr. 23).
The Department of Film at New York's Museum of Modern Art, or MoMa, will hold a screening of the works of award-winning moviemaker Kim Ki-duk, 48, who has directed artistic yet controversial films since 1996.
During the exhibition at MoMa's Theater 1, co-organized by the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Korean Film Council, and supported by the Korean Film Archive in Seoul, movie lovers will be able to take in a total of 14 movies directed by Kim, which will include several features never before seen in the United States, according to MoMa.
Kim is a self-taught maverick filmmaker whose works have impressed international cinema industry with a focus on symbolism and his strong sense of motifs and intensity.
He was a former factory worker, soldier, seminarian and a street artist in France between 1992 and 1995 where he discovered cinema through films like Leo Carax's Les Adamants de Pont Neuf and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (both 1991).
Kim's best known movie in America is the Buddhist-themed, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring", which received the Most Outstanding Film Award at the second Vladivostok International Film Festival of Asia Pacific Countries and at Russia's 13th Golden Fleece Awards in 2004 and won four awards, including the Young Critics Award, at Locarno International Film Festival in 2003. Filmed at a secluded temple, the movie shows an old monk and his young charge, who discovers the secrets of the world around him.
He was named best director at the 54th Berlin Film Festival in 2004 for his film "Samaria", a movie about the sexual exploitation of a teenage girl and her detective father's revenge and forgiveness.
Kim's "3-Iron", which carries his poetic narrative of love and solitude, also won the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the 61st Venice International Film Festival in 2004. Based on a story of an eccentric young man who sneaks into homes to clean or repair them, the movie was later named the best film of 2005 by Belgium's Film Critics Association in 2006.
Kim's films cohere into a vivid and compelling body of work characterized by sweeping camera movements and long, richly composed shots. The characters in Kim's movies are uneasy in their social situations, adopt silence as a protection and tend to react in a brutal way. Kim's films are sometimes circumscribed by water, but always situated in a cinematic space a couple of degrees sharper than reality. All films are presented with English subtitles.
MoMa has been playing a leading role in introducing Korean films to theater audiences in the United States. It held an exhibition of Korean films in 1993 and held a series of film exhibitions of leading Korean directors, including internationally famous director Im Kwon-taek, Shin Sangouk (1926-2006) and Yu Hyun-mok.
By Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff writer
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