Jornal da Mostra

Subscribe here the 'Jornal da Mostra'

Old Boy, de Park Chan-Wook

SOUTH-KOREAN MOVIE REACHES 60% OF ITS DOMESTIC MARKET

Kim Dong-ho, 69, is the founder and director of Pusan International Movie Festival. Pusan (a.k.a. Busan) is the second biggest city in Korea and its biggest harbor, with approximately 3.65 million inhabitants. Dong-ho declared in the monthly magazine EPD-Film – Das Kino-Magazin, one of the most discerning German publications dedicated to the movies, that he feels proud and pleased for having transformed this event into the main display window for the Eastern cinema, especially for South-Korean cinema. The event has been on for ten years always held in October. No wonder this festival is known as the "Asian Cannes".

When interviewed by Jan Schulz-Ojala in February, Dong-ho declared that the positive effect of the festival is due to its focus on the new Eastern cinema from the very first edition, making it possible for its directors to be known overseas, attracting buyers and investors. When asked about the boom of South-Korean genre and auteur movies, Dong-ho explained that, ever since censorship was abolished in that country, a new form of freedom made the birth of a new generation of moviemakers possible, all being 30 to 40 years old. Most of them have studied in the United States or in France. And something that makes all the difference: they make movies for young people.

That is why South-Korean production has grown since 1998. In 2005, 117 million tickets were sold, three times more than eight years before, and in 2006, its market share rose to 60 per cent! To notice the absurdity, compare it with Brazil’s situation: last year we had 9% of the local market, with a recent peak of 21% in 2003.

Even so, Dong-ho has complaints. Despite the reserve fund of US0 million (!!!) for movie production for the next three years, the government, after a commercial deal with the USA, cut in half the number of days each year the national product has to be shown locally in theaters, which, before July 2006, was 146 days. As usual, the ones that will suffer most are the small and independent movies. Dong-ho reminds us that out of approximately one hundred South-Korean movies released each year, just about ten reach the top of the box-office. The tendency is for this to be concentrated on two or three of the local blockbusters a year.

EPD-Film ended the interview highlighting some other movies that helped consolidate the current status of South-Korean cinema, such as ‘The Isle’ (24th Mostra) by Kim Ki-duk, ‘Old Boy’ (28th Mostra) and ‘Lady Vengeance’, both by Park Chan-wook, thus summarizing the dramatic characteristics of the new cinematography of the country: acting with shock; life experiences taken to the extreme by total discipline; and the flawless loneliness of the protagonist banned by love. Traits of an intense cinema marked by a modern aspect conventionalism.