Starting on Thursday, September 2nd and continuing until next Friday, September 10th is the 4th Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul. The festival began in 2007 with a strong focus on cinema’s past, showcasing large retrospectives on various directors and movements in film history. Last year, however, marked a change in direction, with more current films being shown. This year’s festival continues in that direction, with the large majority of films being contemporary and very little in the way of retrospectives. It has now become more like most festivals, a smaller version of Busan but with far less prestigious or well-known filmmakers. There are benefits to this, of course, giving audiences access to films that are not only unavailable in theatres but also unlikely to make DVD as well. However, as a cinephile, I must say I miss the original festival format. That said, there are some films I’m looking forward to this year. Here is a brief preview. (more…)

Over the past week at the Seoul Cinematheque I’ve continued to enjoy their Cine-Vacances program, especially the line-up of French cinema, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU (1965) and Luis Bunuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967). But these films were both already very familiar to me. The real revelation was Agnes Varda’s 1985 film VAGABOND, one of the great works of the decade. Like her contemporaries Godard and Truffaut, Varda was part of the French New Wave of the late 50s/early 60s, contributing such well-known landmarks as CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 (1962) and LE BONHEUR (1965). But Varda was always more associated with the Left-bank filmmakers, such as Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, directors with more sociological and political interest than the group assembled around the CAHIERS DU CINEMA (Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer). This can be seen in the Left-bank group’s greater interest in documentary and in their overall engagement with French politics, which Godard would only really explore as the 60s progressed and he moved further from the New Wave and which the others  would rarely confront directly.  Varda was not as politically engaged as Resnais in the 60s, when he was making such works as HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959) and MURIEL (1963), but her sociological interest was always present and one can argue peaked with VAGABOND, her masterpiece. (more…)

This week at the Seoul Cinematheque I watched two films from their great CineVacances program: Francois Truffaut’s THE LAST METRO (1980) and Claude Chabrol’s THE STORY OF WOMEN (1988). The two have a great deal in common, most specifically the fact that they are both set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Also, both are directed by prominent members of the French New Wave, Francois Truffaut and Cluade Chabrol, and both are films made in the 1980s, many years after both World War II and after the New Wave itself had long passed. Looking back at the films from today’s perspective, one can position both films within the history of representations of the Resistance and within the directorial trajectories of both filmmakers. (more…)

Starting on Friday, the Seoul Cinemathque begins its annual summer program, Cine-Vacances. As usual, the schedule is quite eclectic, with a wide range of films and filmmakers. So far, no information has been posted about subtitles for the foreign films, but even if you limit the list of films to English language only, there is lots of quality work to take in. The complete list is given below, divided between English language and foreign films. Hopefully information about subtitles will be given shortly. The complete schedule is available here. (more…)

I am currently away in Canada and thus unavailable to contribute a regular film column until the end of the month, but an article I wrote on Lee Chang-dong’s 2007 MILYANG/ SECRET SUNSHINE has just been published in the on-line journal JUMP CUT. It is a much longer, more academic piece than I usually contribute here, but may be of interest to those interested in Korean cinema and cinematic style (and, of course, fans of the director). And the journal illustrated the piece well with numerous stills. It is available here.

Currently playing at the Seoul Cinematheque is a 22 film retrospective of probably the most important Japanese director since the classical era: Nagisa Oshima. Best known for his taboo breaking works around obsessive sexuality, Oshima emerged in the 1960s as the most radical figure of the emerging Japanese New Wave. Only some of the films feature English subtitles. The complete list can be viewed here.