The Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival kicked off in Korea on July13 (Thursday), featuring genres of horror and fantasy. The movie festival will continue until July 22.
The ten-day event in the city of Buchon, on the southwest outskirts of Seoul, will be showcasing 251 movies from 25 countries. To mark its 10th anniversary, the film festival of this year will feature a variety of mainstream movies along with independent films for the viewing pleasure of a wider audience.
The opening film was "The Ghost Theater" directed by a talented young Korean, Jeon Gye-soo, who combined a surreal story with outstanding musical performances.
The story is about a girl who finds a job in a drab theater while searching for her grandmother who went missing while going to the movie theatres. The gender-bending film begins similarly to Jim Sharman's "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". However, the plot line later develops into assessing the changing culture of theaters.
For film aficionados of various film genres, the event offers a comprehensive screening of movies. Some of the featured directors are Japan's Ishii Teruo, known as the King of Cult, who produced movies as "Hell", "Screwed", and "Porno Period Drama: Bohachi Bushido". Another well-known director is Jimmy Wang from China, whose acclaimed martial arts movies include "Golden Swallow" and "The Chinese Boxer".
The festival will pay homage to Shin Sang-ok, a mainstream Korean director who passed away in April after living a tumultuous life in both South and North Korea. His horror movies, such as "Thousand-Year-Old Fox" and "A Ghost Story of the Chosun Dynasty" are said to have set higher standards for Korean horror movies.
Horror movies from Italy and New Zealand will also be screened during the festival.
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