The great folks at Subway Cinema, besides bringing us the New York Asian Film Festival each summer, do a great job showcasing the best of classic and contemporary Asian cinemas throughout the year, from special screenings of new films and an old-school kung-fu film festival, to giving fans the chance to meet such living legends as Jackie Chan and, most recently, Jimmy Wang Yu of One-Armed Swordsman fame.
Case in point: Subway Cinema has joined forces with BAMcinématek and the Korea Society to revive the New York Korean Film Festival, an essential showcase of the best in contemporary Korean cinema, encompassing both blockbusters and indie films. The festival has been defunct for a few years, albeit with substitutions and other iterations of the event filling the gap. It returns this year for its 12th edition, screening at BAM Rose Cinemas from November 20-23, and marks the first time Subway Cinema has curated the festival since its first edition in 2001, which had the title "When Korean Cinema Attacks!"
This year's edition includes such recent massive hits as the historical epic The Admiral: Roaring Currents, which is currently holds the record as the all-time top box-office hit in Korea, and the swashbuckling period comedy The Pirates. Blockbusters such as these are bracketed by two independent films by two of the most interesting Korean directors to emerge in the past several years: Gyeongju (pictured above), the opening night film by the brilliant Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu (who will attend the festival); and Futureless Things, a new comedy by avant-garde maverick Kim Kyeong-mook, which closes out the festival.
Full festival program details are below. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit BAM's website.
From Thursday, November 20 through Sunday, November 23, BAMcinématek presents the New York Korean Film Festival, a four-day series showcasing the freshest crop of record-breaking blockbusters and must-see recent works by the peninsula's most celebrated auteurs and mavericks. BAMcinématek has been a strong champion of Korean cinema, hosting the festival on 11 occasions and presenting retrospectives of Park Chan-wook in 2005, Bong Joon-ho in 2010, and Kim Ji-woon in 2011, among others. This year, BAMcinématek, The Korea Society, and Subway Cinema join forces for a renewed 12th edition of the festival, which also marks Subway Cinema's first time curating NYKFF since the program launched in 2001.
Opening the festival on Thursday, November 20 is the US premiere of Zhang Lu's existential comedy Gyeongju, in which a man journeys home for a funeral and finds an unexpected connection with a stranger. Drawing comparisons to Hong Sang-soo and Richard Linklater's Before series, Gyeongju is "exquisitely observed...the cinematic equivalent of a good Haruki Murakami novel, complete with a few delicately supernatural touches" (Peter Debruge, Variety). Lu will appear in person for a Q&A following the screening.
The New York Korean Film Festival also presents special screenings of two of South Korea's biggest box office successes: Kim Han-min's sea epic The Admiral: Roaring Currents (Nov 22), which surpassed Avatar as the highest grossing film in the nation's history and chronicles the heroic defeat of Japan in the 16th-century Battle of Myeongnyang; and Lee Suk-hoon's The Pirates (Nov 23), a family-friendly adventure comedy.
Making its North American premiere is Kim Kyung-mook's Futureless Things (Nov 23), an episodic comedy following a day in the lives of a motley crew of convenience store employees. Also screening are Yang Woo-seok's The Attorney (Nov 21), loosely based on the true story of ex-President of Roh Moo-hyun and starring Song Kang-ho (Snowpiercer, The Host); Jang Jin's Man on High Heels (Nov 22), in which a detective's sex-change operation is delayed by a gang's revenge plot; and Kim Seong-hun's police thriller A Hard Day (Nov 21), which seamlessly blends "heady black humor, social satire and a touch of surrealism" (Maggie Lee, Variety).
As an extension of the festival, DramaFever will host two additional films streaming online: Lee Jae-kyoo's 18th-century costume drama The Fatal Encounter, about an elaborate plot to assassinate the king; and Lee Myung-se's visually ravishing M, featuring complex dream sequences and expressionist nightmares of a novelist suffering from writers' block. More information to be announced.
New York Korean Film Festival Schedule
Thu, Nov 20
7:15pm: Gyeongju
Q&A with director Zhang Lu
Fri, Nov 21
7pm: The Attorney
9:40pm: A Hard Day
Sat, Nov 22
6:45pm: The Admiral: Roaring Currents
9:30pm: Man on High Heels
Sun, Nov 23
4:45pm: The Pirates
7:30pm: Futureless Things
Film Descriptions
All films in Korean with English subtitles.
The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014) 128min
Directed by Kim Han-min.
With Choi Min-sik, Ryoo Seung-ryong, Cho Jin-woong, Jin Goo, Lee Jung-hyun.
The blockbuster to sink all blockbusters, this massive sea epic depicts the 1597 Battle of Myeongryang, in which a formidable Japanese fleet threatened the very existence of the peaceful peninsula. In a desperate, defiant last stand, Korea's most celebrated historical hero, Admiral Yi Sun-shin, portrayed by Choi Min-sik (Besson's Lucy, Park Chan-wook's Oldboy), tries to save his homeland with only a dozen ships at his command and his fierce determination not to go down without a good fight. DCP.
Sat, Nov 22 at 6:45pm
The Attorney (2013) 127min
Directed by Yang Woo-seok.
With Song Kang-ho, Kim Young-ae, Oh Dal-su, Kwak Do-won, Siwan.
The year's most controversial box office hit was this feature based on the life of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun. Set during the country's military dictatorship, it chronicles the moral transformation of a pragmatic, mercenary, and somewhat shady attorney-at-law Song Woo-seok (Song Kang-ho, beloved for his roles in The Host and this year's Snowpiercer), who only got into the legal profession for the money. But everything changes when he decides to challenge the country's National Security Law by taking on a student activist (Yim Si-wan), who has been unfairly arrested and tortured by the government, as his client. Digital.
Fri, Nov 21 at 7pm
Futureless Things (2014) 107min North American Premiere!
Directed by Kim Kyung-mook.
With Kim Su-hyeon, Yoo Yeong, Jeong Hye-in, Gong Myeong, Shin Jae-ha.
This comedy of manners chronicles 24 hours in the intertwined lives of young clerks working at the same convenience store. Structured in 13 episodes, the film brings into the spotlight the private joys and tears of usually invisible people, revealing a fascinating world of part-timers, college dropouts, North Korean defectors, and social outcasts eking out a living in the interstices of ultra-consumerist South Korea. DCP.
Sun, Nov 23 at 7:30pm
Gyeongju (2014) 145min US Premiere!
Directed by Zhang Lu.
With Park Hae-il, Shin Min-ah, Yoon Jin-seo, Kim Tae-hoon, Shin So-yul, Baek Hyun-jin, Ryoo Seung-wan.
In this poetic, sentimental journey in the vein of Hong Sang-soo, Peking University professor Choi-Hyun (War of Arrows' Park Hae-il) returns to the city of Gyeongju to attend a friend's funeral. Spurred by the memory of an obscene picture he saw seven years ago on the wall of a teahouse, he proceeds on a strangely aimless quest, fumbling between tantalizing possibilities of erotic satisfaction or perhaps something of a more spiritual nature. DCP.
Thu, Nov 20 at 7:15pm Q&A with Zhang Lu
A Hard Day (2014) 111min
Directed by Kim Seong-hun.
With Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Jin-woong, Jeong Man-sik, Shin Jung-keun, Kim Dong-young, Joo Suk-tae.
A selection of the Directors' Fortnight at this year's Cannes Film Festival, this slick police thriller follows detective Ko Gun-soo (Hong Sang-soo regular and blockbuster frequent flyer Lee Sun-kyun) on a breathless race against karma and all sorts of odds and (deadly) ends. After running over a stranger on an otherwise deserted, dark highway, he hastily shoves the dead body in his trunk in a moment of wild panic, buying himself a world of trouble. What follows is a super-charged mix of bone-crushing action, chases, black humor, and social satire, proving once again that no one makes smart genre films the way Koreans do. DCP.
Fri, Nov 21 at 9:40pm
Man on High Heels (2014) 125min
Directed by Jang Jin.
With Cha Seung-won, Oh Jeong-se, Esom, Ko Kyeong-pyo, Ahn Kil-kang, Lee Eon-jeong.
One of Korea's most inventive writer-directors Jang Jin (Welcome to Dongmakgol) returns from a three-year hiatus to subvert the detective genre and established notions of Korean masculinity. Detective Ji-wook (Cha Seung-won) is the most bad-ass cop in town, never missing an opportunity to beat the crap out of the bad guys. But just as he decides to move forward with getting a sex-change operation, his plans are derailed when a gang that he has busted starts hurting people close to him. Digital.
Sat, Nov 22 at 9:30pm
The Pirates (2014) 130min
Directed by Lee Suk-hoon.
With Kim Nam-gil, Son Ye-jin, Yu Hae-jin, Lee Kyoung-young, Kim Tae-woo.
Korea's answer to Pirates of the Caribbean is this family-friendly, Hollywood-style swashbuckling period comedy, powered by an ensemble cast, including Son Ye-jin (White Night, My Wife Got Married) as a lady pirate and Kim Nam-gil as the unshaven beau. Follow four rival parties of pirates, bandits, and soldiers as they search for a grey whale that swallowed a royal seal--and encounter sea wenches, a bad guy with an eye-patch, and slapstick aplenty. Arrrrr! DCP.