Moon Seung-wook (문승욱)

Korean actress Kang Hye-jeong [photographed by Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

Kang Hye-jeong has experienced quite a curve during her career as a movie star. The unpredictability in her career shows how eventful the journey was from her starting point leading up to the present. Watching her play the role of Yuki in her debut film "The Butterfly" -- it was directed by Moon Seung-wook and showed Kang's potential as an actor -- makes it hard to think of anyone better for the part. The film "Old Boy", which implanted her name in peoples' minds, also falls into the masterpiece category. Her character Mido in "Old Boy" proclaimed that Kang cannot be fit into a stereotype that had been established by previous Korean actresses and Kang earned a name value of her own. She continuously used that value in her consequent movie roles -- as the beautiful wife of a kind-hearted filmmaker in "Three, Monster" and portraying the character Hong in the impossible-to-describe film "Rules of Dating". Kang Hye-jeong was an intense actor and her movies were like powerful punches on the hearts of moviegoers.

After the film "Welcome to Dongmakgol", however, Kang little by little started going off the predictable path that public expected her to take. She played the adorable and cute girl parts in "Love Phobia", "Herb" and "Kill Me" -- also something the public did not expect to see from her. And in the film "Girlfriends", she played the ordinary twenty-something woman who goes through growing pains at the age of twenty-nine. "I actually went through some things that other people have not experienced or need not experience pretty early in my life. And I was able to create an aggressive and independent character in my early twenties based on such experiences. I was a kid who either ignored pain or let it burst, like my characters in "Old Boy" and "Rules of Dating". But after a while, the ups and downs in my life started getting less frequent and less noisy"....More

Running Nov. 26 through to Dec 18 under the catchphrase "Beautiful Co-existence", CJ-CGV holds the first Multicultural Film Festival, an event organized to acknowledge the more than 1 million foreigners living in Korea and to promote a better understanding of different cultures.

Opening Thursday, the festival will screen its 14-film program successively at CGV multiplexes in Daehangno in Seoul, Ansan in Gyeonggi Province, Guro in Seoul, and in Incheon. 14 films from countries including Vietnam, Turkey, Russia, India, Thailand, and Mongolia.

The opening night film will be Rain Dogs, a 2006 film from Malaysian director HO Yuhang. The goodwill ambassad...More

Director Noh Young-seok's independent feature "Daytime Drinking" received Locarno International Film Festival's Special Mention at the closing ceremony of the 61st edition of the renowned festival on August 16. The film also won the NETPAC(Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) award.

"Daytime Drinking" was invited to Locarno's International competition section. NOH's film shares the honor with the Chinese film Feast of Villains.

"Daytime Drinking" is a comic story which explores Korean culture and customs through the specifics of Korean drinking culture. In a drunken state, the protagonist(...More

The Korean Film Council has announced the recipients of the 2006 Production Support for Art Films fund. Applications were submitted for 32 live-action feature films and 2 animated feature films, and separate juries selected 4 live-action features and 1 animated feature to receive 400 million won ($430,000) each to help cover production costs.

The selected films are:

"Never Forever" (Now Films), dir. Gina Kim
"Cheoeum Mannan Saramdeul" (...More

Song Il-gon's latest film an intricate mystery with an art house style

Kim Kyu Hyun (internews)

Kang Min (Kam Woo-seong), a TV reporter, stumbles onto a horrific scene of double murder in an isolated cabin. His colleague and newscaster, Soo Young (Jang Hyeon-seong), is one of the victims. She whispers, "Spiders ... it's so scary" before breathing her last. Kang notices a mysterious figure and gives him chase, only to be upstaged and beaten unconscious. Dazed, he walks into a highway tunnel and spies a familiar looking shadow, just before being crushed by a speeding SUV.


Production notes

An Oak Film Production. Distributed by CJ Entertainment, in association with Egg Film Productions.

Written and Directed by Song Il-gon. Music by Yoon Min-hwa. Edited by Choi Jae-geun. Production Design by Jun Hye Sung. Make-up Effects by Lee Eun Ah. Costume design by Kim Eun Sook. Cinematography by Kim Chil-joo. Executive Producer Kim Dae-hyeon.

International distribution by CJ Entertainment. 120 minutes.
Kang somehow survives a harrowing brain operation but becomes a major suspect in the double-murder case. Encouraged by his cop friend assigned to the case (Jang Hyeon-seong), Kang retraces his steps leading to his discovery of the murder victims. He cannot shake the feeling, however, that there are strange gaps in his memory ... and they have something to do with the beautiful and kind studio photographer Soo Jin (Seo Jeong) whom he interviewed for a TV program, as well as her stories about that darned forest crawling with those creepy spiders.

"Spider Forest" is the second feature film made by Song Il-gon, who, along with Moon Seung-wook ("Nabi: The Butterfly", a Tarkovskian science fiction film and a debut for the rising star Kang Hye-jeong), is notable among Korean filmmakers for having been educated in the Polish National Academy of Cinema in Lodz. Song's films eschew linear narrative and Hollywood-style characterizations in bold strokes, partaking of the dreamy, evocative stylistics of easte...More