Korean film festival to open at Taman Ismail Marzuki
Korean film festival to open at Taman Ismail Marzuki
By Jane Scott
JAKARTA (JP): Koreans are prodigious movie goers and have wide
ranging tastes. A recent film, Sopyongje, by veteran Korean
director Im Kwok-taek, broke 1993 Korean box office records,
drawing over one million viewers. As a comparison, the American
film Die Hard attracted an audience of more than 700,000 at
Seoul's first-run cinemas.
Koreans are also prodigious movie makers. Even during a
production slump between l985 and 1988, after the l960s when it
was churning out 200 a year, domestic movie production averaged
83 film a year. For local production anywhere, this is a very
respectable number. Just ask the stalwarts of the Indonesian, or
the British or the Australian film industry. The vigorous Korean
movie industry produced 96 films in l992. That same year the
number of movie goers (box office receipts) reached 47,110,000.
For any film, dropping into a flourishing film culture such as
this is nothing short of suspicious. But it isn't just local
tastes which drive the engine of Korean cinema. Now the
international interest of Korean film and the awards it collects
on the international film festival circuit confirm that it will
follow China as a certified source of interest for movie lovers.
In the l950s it was Japan that first broke through into the
international arena of film culture. In the l980s it was China
with the cinema of Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. In the l990s
Taiwan had a turn and soon it may come round to Korea.
Intriguing sounding films --Fly High Run Far Kae Byok, The
Blue in You, Camels Don't Cry Alone, Passion Portrait, Heave Your
Chest, Beyond the Mountain, Because You Are a Woman -- make you
feel that you want to unlock that hermetic code, tease out the
puzzle established.
Third festival
A festival of Korean Films will screen at Taman Ismail Marzuki
next week, and will include some of these titles. It is the third
such festival from Korea to be held in Jakarta and for this first
time all films are in 35mm wide screen. I have an affection for
16mm film study values but this 35mm means wide screen viewing
values for quality international cinema. All the films have
participated in overseas film festivals. An opportunity for local
audiences to watch fine films for once, at regular cinema screen
ratios, rather than laser discs viewed cramped (distorted even)
within the squarer television frame.
There are seven films showing over seven nights. The season
begins tomorrow with My Love, My Bride the choice for opening
night. After the single screening of the first evening, there
will be two films screened each night until Sunday, May 28.
The life of a newly-wed couple is the subject of My Love, My
Bride, a l991 film directed by Lee Myung-se. The pair have just
married, having known each other as college classmates, but they
are not convinced they are really in love. My Love, My Bride
promises mistaken identity and marital mix up.
There are two films by the eminent Im Kwon-taek: Fly High Run
Far Kae Byok and the Diary of King Yonsan. Kwon-taek has been a
film maker since the l960s when he was a director pumping out
genre films. When he made The Diary of King Yonsan in l987 he had
made some 85 films. But the product has changed since the
beginning of the l980s, principally with the advent of Mandala
(l981).
The Diary of King Yonsan charts the times of the troubled King
Yonsan, beset with discord in his kingdom. He has also to deal
with memories of his beloved mother, whom he adored, who was
deposed and sentenced to death. He finds solace in the company of
his courtly ladies only to discover that his brother and
disaffected ministers are planning to wrest the throne from him.
Fly High Run Far Kae Byok (l991), one with a wistful title, is
also a period drama based on an historical episode. The
protagonist is head of the religious sect Chondogyo, during the
last days of the Choson Kingdom in the late l800s and early
l900s. Popular support is there for him but he has to deal with
oppression by the powers at court. His predecessor had been
executed. He himself flees into the mountain wilderness.
In Chung-Ji-young's Beyond The Mountain (l991) the setting is
the mountain retreat where asceticism is practiced under priestly
instruction. A young trainee is sent out on an errand and
encounters desire in the figure of a beautiful Buddhist nun.
Mutually attracted they risk a rendezvous in the mist.
Because You Are a woman, released in l990, is the work of
female director, Kim Yu-Jin. Said to register a protest against
the place of women in Korean society, this film covers ground
from single parenting to assault in self-defense to rape. The
central problem for the female protagonist appears to be how to
maintain integrity when social forces, including a new husband,
seem determined to undermine it.
Heave Your Chest is a l986 film directed by Choi Won-young. It
centers on Mr. Park, retired teacher on an around the country
cycling tour, and the two young cyclists he meets along his way.
They continue their journey in an "extra-mural" class on life and
moral values.
The lesson is also central to A Little pinwheel (l990) which
has already been screened once during this week's Jakarta
International Festival. Two brothers live alone with their
grandmother in a remote country region where to survive requires
the elder brother to work in a factory by day (and study by
night) and the grandmother to work as laborer on a road
construction site. Namdo, who at 15 is four years older than his
brother, has aspirations to enter air force engineering school.
Young Namsik is loyal and loving and just wants his big brother
to stay around.
But Namdo feels impelled to go and take on the world. Failing
his air force entrance exams first off only makes the need to
leave more urgent and he sets off for Seoul and factory work in
the hope that he will be able to eventually bring brother and
grandmother to the city with him.
Namsik and his grandmother struggle on bravely, in what
appears to be a hand-to-mouth existence. But their circumstances
are not exceptional. They are just like the next door family whom
you might call the neighbors, living some distance away. A
Handicapped father alone with three young daughters to rear.
Tales of hardship are commonplace in the hinterlands of rapid
development. Families without mothers or fathers wherein young
children need to go to work to sustain their sibling in the
reality. A Little Pinwheel is based on a true story.
Special lesson
One day Namsik's teacher has a special lesson encrypted in the
paper pinwheel they craft in class: "You should be a pinwheel to
take the wind, not let the wind take you." Namsik sets to work.
Doh has dreams of flying jets but Sik is long on endurance and
quickly fills the space vacated by his brother and their father
before him.
You can expect a film such as this to have a self-effacing
style, so that it does not draw attention to the camera eye and
detract from the human drama. Sometimes in A Little Pinwheel
stylistic play paints a world of childhood imagery. Sporadically,
the film takes on Namsik's point of view.
At night, Namsik awaits his brother where the bus will set
down. A vehicle makes its way toward him and for a while you are
left wondering what the game is, with those lights up on the
screen. Points of light shine wend their way through the
background of tree trunks. Whose point of view is this ? A bus
headlight suddenly slams into the foreground and Nambo tumbles
down, out of frame.
Much of the action actually takes place in darkness, a
reasonable outcome for a story about a family so poor they must
live in a house without electricity. The night for night
photography confers a ghostly pallor on the figures and the
faces, probably not the effect of narrative intended, but
faithfully naturalistic all the same.
Aside from these occasions, the other stylistic effects are
arbitrary, with hand-held movement all of a sudden in the rush of
dramatic action towards the end of the film. The several bravura
shots, like the camera pulling back dramatically for a coastal
location shot, are the cinematographer's attempt to escape the
structures of the text.
The cinematographer's chance comes, but too late, with the
film's happy ending written into a series of stills behind the
closing titles. All of a sudden the film has positioned itself in
the late twentieth century, when the mise-en-scene changes with a
jolt from dark woods or simple cottage interior, to a final
sequences at the air force training college and parade ground.
Suddenly, Namdo and Namsik and grandmother seem to have been
wrenched with a single movement into the late twentieth century.
Problems aside, next week's screenings are full of promise.
Like the protagonist of A little Pinwheel, the cinema of rapidly
developing Korea has been growing mushrooms in the dark.