A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) & Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) & Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)

Friday, October 31, 2008 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Room 119, William L. Harkness Hall See map
100 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

2:00 PM
A Tale of Two Sisters
Directed by Kim Ji-woon, 2003 (115min)

Adapting a Korean fairytale to one of the most dreadful gothic horrors, Kim Ji-woon, master of all genres, casts outrageous puzzles of desire and psyche that implode a teenage girl’s Oedipal circuit. The stylistic trigger of the “sad beautiful horror” that has yielded not a few epigones in Korea.

4:15 PM
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
Directed by Park Chan-wook, 2002 (129min)

The internationally acclaimed director Park Chan-wook’s most radical film in the “vengeance trilogy,” followed by Oldboy. This hardboiled thriller with relentless violence excavates not only ethical dilemmas surrounding family relationships, but the 1980s political structures still shadowing contemporary Korea.

“Forging and Translating Genre”: Contemporary Korean Cinema in (Trans-) National Contexts
Perhaps the most defiant fortress against Hollywood has recently been constructed in South Korea, and its cinematic geopolitics has allowed Korean cinema to mix commercialism and auteurism in unique ways. Among distinctive characteristics of this success is young cineastes’ active and creative reliance on genre conventions. Screening four remarkable films, this special event introduces two scholars who examine how Korean cinema has forged various genres in the national context, and how it has specifically translated the horror genre in the East Asian context.

Region: 
Korea