FRIDAY - Classics of South Korean Cinema
Programmed by: William Carroll
When Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite began gaining Oscar buzz in late 2019, I got inspired to do a series of Classic South Korean Cinema. Thanks to the hard work of preservation and restoration by the Korean Film Archive, many of these films are available for screening, and they deserve to be viewed in the best way possible.
South Korea developed a vibrant industry by the mid-1950s, even as the country was struggling to recover from colonialism and the Korean Civil War. Talented filmmakers made noirish thrillers, historical films, Manchurian Action films, horror films, war films and neorealist dramas. The most popular was melodrama, though there was a wide stylistic variety—just think of the elegant restraint of The Coachman compared with the childhood innocence depicted in My Mother and Her Guest. Our series also includes the two best known and most acclaimed films of the era—the domestic thriller The Housemaid and the neorealist drama Aimless Bullet, both key influences on South Korean filmmakers to this day.
This series is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago with generous support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
7:00PM Friday, January 28th
The Housemaid (1960)
Kim Ki-young · 111m · Digital
In Kim Ki-young's intensely psychological domestic thriller, a composer hires a housemaid to assist his newly pregnant wife. The family begins to spin out of control as the two women vie for the composer's attention amidst his failures as a husband and a lover. The Housemaid is perhaps the best-known film of South Korean cinema’s first Golden Age, and Bong Joon-ho has cited the film as a key influence on Parasite and one of his all-time favorites.
7:00PM Friday, February 4th
My Mother and Her Houseguest (1961)
Shin Sang-ok · 102m · Digital
One of the great melodramas of the first Golden Age of South Korean cinema. A widowed mother, living with her young daughter, her mother-in-law, and her housekeeper, takes in a boarder and develops a romance with him. The film is told from the perspective of six-year-old Ok-hee, who witnesses the interactions of her mother with the boarder and acts as their messenger, without fully understanding their feelings or the social ramifications of their love.
7:00PM Friday, February 11th
Madame Freedom (1956)
Han Hyeong-mo · 125m · Digital
Professor Jang and his wife Sunyoung outwardly appear to be a respectable upper-class Seoulite couple, but their marriage is tested as each entertains the possibility of an affair. As Sunyoung gives in to temptation, her indulgences lead to her downfall. The film's scandalousness made it both incredibly popular and controversial when it was released, cementing its position as a classic melodrama from the first Golden Age of South Korean Cinema.
7:00PM Friday, February 25th
The Coachman (1961)
Kang Dae-jin · 120m · DCP
The first Korean film to win an award at an international film festival. The Coachman depicts the life of a single father who makes his living by operating a horse-drawn cart in Seoul as his way of life becomes obsolete. Like Aimless Bullet, this film presents a frank view of those left behind in modernizing South Korea, albeit with a greater sense of hope for the future. Ranked #5 on the Korean Film Archive’s 2014 list of Best Korean films.
7:00PM Friday, March 4th
The Daughters of Kim's Pharmacy (1963)
Yu Hyun-mok · 109m · Digital
In the beautiful city of Tongyeong along Korea’s southeastern coast, pharmacist Kim is convinced that an old curse on his family is the source of him and his four daughters' misfortune. Ostensibly a family drama, The Daughters of Kim’s Pharmacy (dir. Yu Hyun-mok, also Aimless Bullet) features eerily atmospheric sets, shamanism, and axe-wielding opium addicts in a narrative that rises to an unpredictable frenzy as it progresses to its finale.
7:00PM Friday, March 11th
A Flower in Hell (1958)
Shin Sang-ok · 86m · DCP
A picture of 1950s South Korea, A Flower in Hell depicts a society ravaged in the aftermath of the Korean War. Freshly out of the military, young Dong-shik comes to Seoul to convince his brother Young-shik, who steals American army base supplies with the help of local prostitutes, to come home and leave his thievery behind. Instead, Dong-shik finds himself seduced by his brother's girlfriend, the prostitute Sonia, who helps Young-shik in his operations.
