The South Korean Film Renaissance

For the past decade, the Korean film industry has enjoyed a renaissance. With innovative storytelling and visceral effects, Korean films not only have been commercially viable in the domestic and regional markets but also have appealed to cinephiles everywhere on the international festival circuit. This book provides both an industrial and an aesthetic account of how the Korean film industry managed to turn an economic crisis—triggered in part by globalizing processes in the world film industry—into a fiscal and cultural boom. Jinhee Choi examines the ways in which Korean film production companies, backed by affluent corporations and venture capitalists, concocted a variety of winning production trends. Through close analyses of key films, Choi demonstrates how contemporary Korean cinema portrays issues immediate to its own Korean audiences while incorporating the transnational aesthetics of Hollywood and other national cinemas such as Hong Kong and Japan. Appendices include data on box office rankings, numbers of films produced and released, market shares, and film festival showings.

Examining the theoretical, historical, and contemporary impact of South Korea's Golden Age of cinema.

Korean film has been heralded as the “newest tiger” of Asian cinema. In the past year, South Korea became one of the only countries in the world in which local films outsold Hollywood films, and Korean director Park Chan-wook was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes. New Korean Cinema provides a comprehensive overview of the production, circulation, and reception of this vibrant cinema, which has begun to flourish again in the past decade, following the lifting of repressive government policies. In addition to providing a cultural, historical, and social context for understanding this burgeoning cinema, the book considers the political economy of South Korea's film industry, strategies of domestic and international distribution and marketing, and the consumption of Korean films throughout the world. The volume also includes a glossary of key terms and a bibliography of works on Korean cinema. New Korean Cinema gathers prominent critics from North America, Asia, and Europe to make sense of this exploding film industry. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the complex roles played by national and regional cinemas in a global age.

Hollywood films may dominate the world’s box offices today, but in Korea it’s the homegrown product that has been capturing the public’s attention. Korean films industry today and look inside of directors and stars. Korean film directors were getting major press at the world’s different film festivals. Exports were booming, and the films that reached overseas audiences found a warm reception there Contents Prologue Chapter One A Look Inside Korean Cinema The Korean Film Industry Today A Foreign Perspective Fostering New Talent Chapter Two Going Global Hallyu and Korean Film Working Internationally: Co-Productions Acclaimed Directors K-Movie Stars Chapter Three How Korean Film Got Here The Early Years (1920–1939) Golden Age: The 1960s and the ‘Literary Film’ Out of the Quicksand (1970–1989) Renaissance: 'Planned Movies' and Government Support (1990 to today) Chapter Four Film Festivals Busan International Film Festival Jeonju International Film Festival Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul Jecheon International Music & Film Festival Other Festivals Chapter Five Ten Korean Films with Overseas Followings Appendix Further Reading Award-winning Korean Films at Overseas Festivals Park Chan-wook,Hong Sang-soo,Kim Ki-duk,Lee Chang-dong,Bong Joon-ho,Kim Jee-woon, Im Sang-soo, Byun Young-joo, Choi Dong-hoon, Na Hong-jin, Yang Ik-june, Yun Seong-hyeon, Yeon Sang-ho, Song Kang-ho, Jeon Do-youn, Sul Kyoung-gu, Lee Byung-hun, Jun Ji-hyun, Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), The Housemaid, The Coachman, Heavenly Homecoming to Stars, The Surrogate Woman, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, My Sassy Girl , Oldboy, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. . . and Spring, The Host, Poetry

In 1916, a group of Korean farmers and their children gathered to watch a film depicting the enthronement of the Japanese emperor. For this screening, a unit of the colonial government’s news agency brought a projector and generator by train to their remote rural town. Before the formation of commercial moviegoing culture for colonial audiences in rural Korean towns, many films were sent to such towns and villages as propaganda. The colonial authorities, as well as later South Korean postcolonial state authorities, saw film as the most effective medium for disseminating their political messages. In Cine-Mobility, Han Sang Kim argues that the force of propaganda films in Korea was derived primarily not from their messages but from the new mobility of the viewing position. From the first film shot in Korea in 1901 through early internet screen cultures in late 1990s South Korea, Cine-Mobility explores the association between cinematic media and transportation mobility, not only in diverse and discrete forms such as railroads, motorways, automobiles, automation, and digital technologies, but also in connection with the newly established rules and restrictions and the new culture of mobility, including changes in gender dynamics, that accompanied it.

This book explores South Korean cinema’s inimitable relationship with the urban landscape and identifies the ways in which Seoul is utilised as a celluloid canvas, national artefact and, above all else, a distinctive cultural backdrop. Using five different approaches to urban space, from five distinctive and contrasting theoretical perspectives, Urban Landscapes in Post-Millennial South Korean Cinema investigates and seeks to understand why the cinematic representation, identity and presence of Seoul have been central to the preservation and recognition of the South Korean film industry as an independent, autonomous and nationally unique institution.