Lee Chang-dong (이창동)

2008/05/08 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

The Barcelona Asian Film Festival's (BAFF) jury awarded "Secret Sunshine" (Miryang) the Cinematik prize. The winner of Cinematik is also secured of a release in Spain. "Secret Sunshine" is directed by LEE Chang-dong and stars JEON Do-yeon and SONG Kang-ho in a tale about a single mother's mental struggle after losing her young son.

Director JEON Soo-il is also successful at BAFF, his "With a Girl of Black Soil" won the Golden Durian, an award for emerging talents. The panel in charge of selecting the Golden Durian winner included Pusan International Film Festival director KIM Dong-ho.

Both "With a Girl of Black Soil" and "Secret Sunshine were selected" for the Official Competition section. The audience voted Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om (India) as the most popular film with KIM Ki-duk's "Breath" a close second, according to BAFF's website. BAFF celebrated this year its tenth anniversary and the festival highlighted that BAFF is Barcelona's fastest growing film festival. Barcelona h...

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2008/04/24 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Korean TV and film stars gathered together for The 44th PaekSang Arts Awards Thursday evening in Seoul. The Awards honors filmmakers, TV actors and actresses, producers and programs that made distinguishing marks in the field of visual media arts.

In the film category, the grand prize went to "The Chaser" directed by Na Hong-jin, who also won the best new director award. "The Chaser" has attracted over 5 million filmgoers so far, winning the top-grossing film title for the first half of 2008. The best director award went to Lee Chang-dong of "Secret Sunshine" and the best picture award to "Forever the Moment", based on a true story of the Korean women's handball team. Im Chang-jeong of "Scout" was named the best actor and Kim Min-hee of "Hellcats" the best actress. Also hunky superstar Kwon Sang-woo and lovely Kim Jeong-eun won the popularity vote.

The grand prize in the TV category was given to Kang Ho-dong for his leadership in the "One Night Two Days" segment of the entertainm...

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2008/03/21 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

In the last few years, Korean films, TV dramas and pop music have become immensely popular abroad, a phenomenon known as the Korean Wave. This is the 25th in a series of essays by a select group of scholars and journalists looking at the spread of Korean pop culture in Southeast Asian countries and beyond. - Ed.

"Hallyu", or the Korean Wave, marks the long overdue re-emergence of Korean culture into the global arena. Korean culture's newfound international vogue situates South Korean cinema, TV melodramas, K-pop, and computer games as active participants in the transformation of world culture.

These "domestic" electronic audio-visual cultural creations are no longer limited to just the Korean peninsula and the global Korean diaspora despite that they are produced in the Korean language - a language that is not one of the globalized imperial languages such as English, French, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese.

Despite this linguistic barrier, hallyu is now a recognized agent of gl...

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2008/03/18 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Director Lee Chang-dong's 'Secret Sunshine' has won three awards at the second annual Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong. The film received the Best Film, Best Director and Best Leading Actress (Jeon Do-yeon) awards.

This is the second time for a Korean film to win the Best Film award after 'The Host' won the Best Film award last year.

At the Asian Film Awards, which was held as a part of the opening ceremony for the Hong Kong International Film Festival, 'Secret Sunshine' competed with Ang Lee's 'Lust, Caution' and Peter Chan's 'The Warlords' and won the coveted award.

Jeon Do-yeon, who received an award for Best Leading Actress, thanked director Lee Chang-dong and co-star Song Kang-ho and said she felt honored to be presented with the award when there were so many talented candidates.

Director Lee expressed his joy by saying that he had expected Jeon to win an award but had not expected to win an award himself.

The Asian Film Awards was founded last year in order to build ...

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2008/03/18 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter

The internationally acclaimed Korean film "Secret Sunshine" (Miryang) grabbed the spotlight at the second annual Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong, picking up three top awards including Best Film.

"Secret Sunshine", which is about a young widow moving to her late husband's hometown, beat other Asian films such as the controversial thriller "Lust, Caution", Hong Kong's "The Sun Also Rises" and Japan's "I Just Didn't Do It".

Actress Jeon Do-yeon won Best Actress, adding another award to her collection, which includes several Korean acting awards and the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival last May. She won over Korean actress Kim Yun-jin and Chinese actress Tang Wei.

"I don't usually need time to recover from most of the roles I portray. But this time, because my character was so damaged, it took some time to recover from it", Jeon was quoted by the Associated Press, after winning the award.

The film's director Lee Chang-dong...

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