Seom by Ki-duk, one of the leading lights of this new generation.
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Neo-realism
is a moral perspective on the world.
Roberto
Rossellini, Italian film director (1906-1977)
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To know more
World Production Rank 1999: 14
Local films’ share of domestic box-office 1998: 25%
Number of films produced
Total Population (millions)
1988: 42
1998: 46.1
Number of screens
1988: 696
1999: 528
Cinema admissions (millions)
1988: 52.20
1998: 45.76
Total film production investment (US$m) 1999: 111.73
Source: Screen Digest
(contact: David.Hancock@
screendigest.com) |
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The advent of democracy in South
Korea and efforts to defend local film production against U.S. competition have spawned
a new generation of filmmakers who are winning plaudits at home and abroad
 South Korea’s filmmakers are in a recalcitrant mood. They
are battling the American juggernaut in its effort to lift a local quota on importing
foreign films, but these militants don’t have their backs to the wall: the general
public shares the country’s new cultural exuberance, and is backing its young directors.
“Our young filmmakers are to be congratulated on the breadth of their imagination
and their box-office successes,” says 58-year-old Lee Doo-yong, who has made more
than 50 films. “They know what they want to say. That’s something new round here.”
The South Korean film industry is doing extremely well. It conquered 37 per cent
of the domestic market in 1999 (up from 25 per cent the previous year and 18 per
cent in 1997), a total boosted by a record 6.5 million people who went to see the
film Shiri (Titanic only managed a local audience of 4.3 million).
With this windfall, the man who made the film, Kang Je-gyu, decided to join forces
with young filmmakers, revamp the distribution network and lay the groundwork for
cooperation between Asian countries. New film companies (Sidus, Cinema Service, Myung
Film, East Film, Bom) are also zeroing in on young directors just starting out. Serious
money from the likes of Mirae Esset, Unikorea, CJ Entertainment and National Technology
Finance is filling the gap left by the big industrial conglomerates, the chaebol,
which pulled out of film financing during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
It was in the midst of the economic downturn that the United States chose to attack
the system of quotas in place since 1985. The main feature of these, one which ensured
the industry’s prosperity, stipulated that Korean films should be shown in cinemas
for between 100 and 146 days a year. But the reaction from South Korean professionals,
backed by France, stopped the U.S. campaign in its tracks.
Despite a drop in the number of productions caused by the economic crisis, 18 films
by first-time directors (out of a total of 43 new films) were made in 1999 and seven
of the year’s 10 most popular films were debuts. In 1999, 22 such first films and
10 second features by new directors were made out of a total of 53 releases, at an
average cost of about $1.5 million each.
The rise of this new cinema dates back to the late 1980s, at the end of years of
authoritarian political rule that began in 1961 with the long dictatorships of Park
Chung-hee and then Chun Doo-hwan. In the period leading to 1971, the South Korean
film industry had also prospered, turning out some 200 films a year despite the military
regime and the distorting effects of the Cold War, which partly paralyzed cultural
life. Society was by then modernizing at lightning speed, and films mirrored the
social and political ferment that resulted.
Ha Kil-jong’s 1975 film Parade of Fools, a favourite of the new wave, came to symbolize
this period. With a final scene that is still tremendously moving, the film has become
an icon for young directors, inspiring the landmark film of the Korean new wave,
Lee Jang-ho’s Declaration of Fools (1983). Kil-jong’s film depicts a nation’s youth
that is innocent and full of dreams but shaken by the political situation, a youth
longing for freedom and democracy. “The entire South Korean film industry suffered
from crippling censorship,” Lee Doo-yong says. “In 1980, in front of my very eyes,
a minor official clipped out half an hour’s worth of negatives from my film The Last
Eyewitness, which I was particularly fond of. What an incredible waste of creative
work! I even considered giving up film altogether.”
After filmmaking restrictions were lifted in 1985 and script censorship abolished
in 1987, a fresh new cinema appeared around 1988. Park Kwang-su’s A Single Spark
(1996) and Jang Sun-woo’s A Petal (1996), films made by two veterans of this new
wave, marked a peak of public interest in liberated political cinema. The two films
dealt with a couple of key events which had long been taboo: the banning of the trade
union movement and the massacre at Kwang-ju in 1980, when 2,000 people died according
to witnesses but only 200 according to the Chun Doo-hwan regime. Public support for
the films was proof of the new cinema’s vigour.
The impact of the jointly-made The Night Before the Strike (1990) was just as significant
for the then bold and militant independent cinema. To watch this aesthetically unimpressive
film in the only place it could be seen, a university campus, it was best to wear
training shoes and know how to run. On one occasion 1,700 police plus a helicopter
turned up to seize a copy of the film. In all, a million young people saw it even
though it was officially banned.
The film’s producers and directors, like several others–such as Lee Eun, Lee Yong-bae,
Chang Dong-hong and Jang Yun-hyun, along with the critic Lee Yong-kwan–advocated
links between the film world and the working class. Today, they hold important posts
in bodies such as the KOFIC, set up to encourage film creativity on the model of
France’s National Film Centre, the CNC.
Sopyonje set off another revolution in 1993 by drawing many more people to the cinema.
Through a melancholy paean to the disappearing art of traditional singing, veteran
director Im Kwon-taek, who already has 90 films under his belt, took a new look at
the nation’s painful course since the Japanese occupation. This journey through cultural
history sent a shockwave through audiences. More than a million people went to see
it, beating all records and overshadowing local box office interest in Steven Spielberg’s
Jurassic Park.
The enthusiasm for Korean-made films has continued. Cinema audiences keep on growing
and films by first-time directors often draw more than a million people. But public
interest has shifted, with young people between 17 and 25–who make up the majority
of cinema-goers–becoming the key to commercial success.
A landmark for Korean culture
Yet the film industry’s new vitality, along
with the growing role of big investors, has not helped all directors. Chunhyang,
Im Kwon-taek’s latest work, which in 2000 became the first Korean film to be officially
presented at the Cannes festival, was a box-office flop. The generation of directors
aged over 50–Lee Doo-yong, who made L’Amour (1999), and Bae Chang-ho, director of
The Heart (1998)–is having big problems making small-budget independent films. Even
the granddaddy of the industry, 75-year-old Sin Sang-ok, cannot complete his film
The Visit, the tale of a father who discovers his daughter working as a bar hostess
in Seoul, illustrating the conflict between tradition and the thrusting materialism
of today.
The times clearly favour young filmmakers inspired by Hollywood formulas and video-game
scripts, but independent cinema has not given up yet. Since the arrival of democracy,
it has simply changed its slogans. Instead of “Freedom or death!” it now proclaims,
as if in reference to the French surrealist poet Robert Desnos, “Freedom or love!”
Films made by this school, such as Spring in My Hometown (1998) by Lee Kwang-mo,
Peppermint Candy (1999) by Lee Chang-dong, Christmas in August (1998) by Huh Jing-ho
and The Spy (1999) by Jang Jin, have spread abroad. The best-known director among
them, Hong Sang-su, who made The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well in 1996, is optimistic.
“I think Korean cinema will stay very interesting for another decade at least,” he
says, pointing out that cinema courses in universities draw talented students, that
many short films are getting shown and that movie websites are proliferating. “The
cinema is going to become the main landmark for Korean culture in all its diversity,”
he says. “And that’s exciting.” The release in September of young director Park Chan-ook’s
new film Joint Security Area, with ticket sales of a million in its first three days,
shows that the issue of reconciliation with North Korea has generated even more powerful
subject matter.
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