Korean American Films in New York

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 16 March 2011 15:54

Written by L E Shannon

The Korean American Film Festival New York (KAFFNY) is running March 17-20, 2011 at several venues around Manhattan in New York City. Programs at White Box are being live streamed to the Big Screen Project in the public plaza behind the Eventi Hotel at 30th Street and 6th Avenue.

Now in its fifth year, KAFFNY is the only New York based independent film festival showcasing Korean American and Korean diasporic perspectives in film. Since 2006, KAFFNY has broadened its programming to include international films and videos by Korean and as well as non-Korean filmmakers.

This year, KAFFNY presents New York audiences with a challenging and innovative program ranging from groundbreaking early Korean cinema to the most current emerging Korean American films.

KAFFNY also honors the veteran documentary filmmaker Dai-Sil Kim-Gibson with a retrospective of six pioneering films that powerfully capture the complexities of the Korean diaspora.

Special guest and long-time collaborator Charles Burnett joins Dai Sil Kim Gibson for a discussion about the LA Riots, 19 years later, after the screening of her documentaries Sa-I-Gu and Wet Sand: Voices of LA.

KAFFNY’s opening night presentation features a live re-score of the seminal Korean Golden age drama Madame Freedom (1956) by Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky with virtuoso violinist Sean Lee and acclaimed cellist Okkyung Lee.

Feature-Length Films include:

International Premiere:

The Boat
Dir. Young Nam Kim (Korean Japanese co-production)
The unlikely story of a cross-cultural friendship that develops between a couple of smugglers, a South Korean and his contact on the other side, a young Japanese man. With Ha Jung Woo, Tsumabuki Satoshi.

US Premiere:

The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger
Dire. Jane Jin Kaisen and Guston Sondig-Kung
The third film in a trilogy of narrative experimental films dealing with international adoption and the ideological, geopolitical, historical, and psychological effects of that process. This film looks at the legacy of international adoption from a feminist perspective and within a transgenerational and transnational scope.  

NYC Premiere:

The House Of Suh
Dir. Iris Kim
This Award-winning documentary recounts the chilling story of an immigrant family whose pursuit of happiness quickly became riddled with misfortune, culminating on September 25, 1993, when Andrew shot and killed his older sister’s fiancé of eight years at her bidding.

Psychohydrography
Dir. Peter Bo Rappmund
An analysis of the flow of water from mountain to aqueduct, city to sea. Shot at and around the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Los Angeles River and Pacific Ocean. HD video constructed entirely from single frame photography.

Double Bill:

Centre Forward
Dir. Pak Chong Song
North Korea’s first football film originally made in 1978, remastered by Koryo Tours in 2010. This 75 minute film is well known in North Korea but has never been released internationally. Fascinating both as an example of North Korean filmmaking and a strong story of overcoming athletic adversity, Centre Forward is at once inspirational, dramatic, amusing, and educational. Even better, by showing the sport’s importance in societies very different from our own, this illustrates the truly universal appeal of the "beautiful game".

Red Chapel
Dir. Mads Bruegger
One of last year’s standout films at Sundance, where the film had its US premiere. This feature-length documentary follows a journalist who is without scruples, a self-proclaimed spastic and a comedian who travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange visit to challenge the totalitarian regime.

Dai Sil Kim-Gibson Retrospective:

Born in northern Korea when it was under Japanese colonial rule, Dai Sil Kim-Gibson came to the United States in 1962 to pursue graduate studies. She was a senior program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities and director of the media program of the New York State Council on the Arts.  She resigned from the Council on the Arts to pursue a film career in 1988, going on to produce an array of award-winning films.

Sa-I-Gu, or April 29, about the 1992 Los Angeles crisis from the perspectives of Korean woman shopkeepers, was praised by the Washington Post as “a passionate point of view piece.”

Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans, her film about the forced Korean laborers on Sakhalin island, victims of World War II and the Cold War.

Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, a powerful documentary about Korean women forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Military during World War II.  

Wet Sand: Voices from LA (2004) explores the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest. It has been shown at numerous festivals in the United States and abroad, including the 8th Pusan International Film Festival in Korea and the 12th Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles.

Motherland, her most recent film, had a sold-out world premiere at the 11th Pusan International Film Festival in 2006. It is currently distributed by Women Make Movies in New York City.

America Becoming, a feature documentary which she produced and wrote.

Olivia's Story, directed by Charles Burnett which she also produced and wrote.

John H. Lee:
Sayonara Itsuka (2010)
One of the new generations of pan-Asian international directors, John H. Lee's films are imbued with cosmopolitan sensibilities. Born in Seoul, Korea, Lee moved to America at age 12. Upon graduating from New York University Film School, Lee made his feature debut with The Cut Runs Deep. Since then, he went on to direct over 25 international music videos and three more features.

SHORTS COMPETITION

Richard the Elite University Student from London by Lee Yong-seung
Affair (Jung) by Dou Xing
Heart by Erick Oh
Apple by Jung Chul
To Wander in Pandemonium by Edward Kim
Mist Trail by Andrew Oh
Triangle by Janice Ahn

SHORTS 1
Works of Art by Andy Pang
The Queen by Christina Choe
The Agency by Sam Schectman
Maria the Korean Bride by Maria Yoon
Mister Green by Greg Pak
Hanji Paper Project by Aimee Lee

SHORTS 2
ether by Gi Young Rhee
Inert by Kyunghee Kang
Ajumma Are You Crazy by Brent Anbe
Chase Thompson: A Film by Chase Thompson by Vincent Lin
Rosewood by Marvin Choi
Arirang Blues by Pyeungheun Baik
Toy House by Yun Jeong Ko
Daddy Called Me a Snake by Sun Young Kim
One Blue Strip Show by So Young Yang

Special Events/Panels

White Box + Big Screen Project Film/Video Screenings:
Peter Bo Rappmund’s psychohydrography
Jane Jin Kaisen and Guston Sondig-Kung’s The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger
video works by So Young Yang

Korean American Filmmakers Panel
Sun, 3/20, Chelsea Clearview

For more information, please visit www.kaffny.com.

Korean American Film Festival New York (KAFFNY)
March 17-20, 2011

Chelsea Clearview Cinemas
260 West 23rd St
New York, NY 10011
(212) 691-5519

White Box
329 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 714-2347

Big Screen Project
6th Avenue (betw 29th and 30th Streets)
New York, NY

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