The Pusan International Film Festival Organizing Committee announced that director Hwang Cheol-min's 'Spying Cam (Frakchi)' won the NETPAC Award at the 14th Brisbane International Film Festival in Australia, which came to a close on August 8.
NETPAC (the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) takes as one of its aims the promotion of
Asian cinema's role in the development of cultural diversity and integrity in the face of globalization. It involves filmmakers, critics, Festivals, programmers, distributors, exhibitors, and film educators. One of the ways of promoting Asian film is through the presentation of the NETPAC Award at film Festivals, and this year, the Brisbane International Film Festival in Australia hosted it.
"Spying Cam" has won awards and acclaims at overseas film festivals, such as theFIPRESCI Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in addition to prizes at the Buenos Aires International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Tony Rayns, a critic and programmer of the Vancouver International Film Festival described the film as an intriguing new feature by Hwang Cheol-min, the godfather of Korean indie filmmaking.
This independent feature, 'Spying Cam (Frakchi)' is above all an intriguing character study, or rather, an investigation into what happens when you put two diverse and conflicting characters together in a sweltering, bare hotel room and don't let them out again.Two men read Dostoevsky and film with a video camera, however, they have a reason to be there; an unpredictable and excellent character study and a tragic political thriller. Of the two, the eldest is about thirty, macho, dominant, tending towards violence and armed with a pistol and a mobile phone. On the other hand, the other, in his early twenties, is well educated, even intellectual, and clearly the subservient of the two. As main attribute, he has Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment with him (that becomes a source of a very educational role-playing game) and the Sony video camera from the title. Apart from that, the two of them kill time by watching amorous developments in the room next door through a hole in the wall. The ending puts what went before in a surprising and worrisome political light.
Hwang Cheol-Min (1960) studied Media Studies in Mainz and Cinematography at the DFFB in Berlin. He was a professor at the Film Department of Sejong University and is currently the Director of the Korean Independent Film Association.
(Selection) The Friend (1991), The Last Train (1993), Rita (1995), Fuck Hamlet (1996), My Own Milky Way (2000), Battle of Ok-Cheon (2001), My Girlfriend, the Liar (2001), The King and his Sculptor (2002), Spying Cam (2004)
English 
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