From inventive ways to remotely celebrate the cherry blossoms to the Made in Hong Kong Film Festival, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art featured some of the best virtual programming during the pandemic’s darkest days. But after a two-year hiatus, the gallery’s 300-seat Meyer Auditorium finally reopens to the public this weekend, and what better way to re-inaugurate the space than with the Korean Film Festival. This year’s hybrid program offers in-person screenings of new features as well as online selections of experimental films. The line-up presents a wide range of new Korean cinema, from box-office hits to art-house favorites.
Korean Film Festival DC 2022 opens at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art on June 10 and runs through July 3. Register for free tickets here. All in-person screenings take place at Meyer Auditorium, located on the lower level of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, 12th Street and Independence Avenue, SW. Use the Independence Avenue entrance.
If you see only one film this festival:
THE BOOK OF FISH
In this gorgeous black-and-white period drama, director Lee Joon-ik immerses the viewer in the politics of the Joseon Dynasty in early 19th century Korea. Scholar Jeong Yak-jeon (played by Sol Kyung-gu) is banished to a remote island as punishment for his Catholic beliefs where he’s befriended by fisherman Jang Chang-dae (played by K-drama star Byun Yo-han), a concubine’s son trying to overcome his humble background and become a scholar. As Yak-jeon instructs the fisherman in the classics (including Confucius and Jesus), Chang-dae tutors him in more material pursuits: the incredible variety of aquatic life around the island. Though the ways of this long-vanished lifestyle are far removed from the 21st century, the master and his pupil encounter ideas familiar to any day and age, class conflict, romantic entanglements, governmental corruption, and watered-down ideals. The leads are consistently compelling in their historical buddy-movie arc and the lush monochrome cinematography bathes the drama in a romantic nostalgia.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, June 25 at 2:00 pm
If you want to observe the changing roles of women in Korean society:
A WOMAN JUDGE
This year’s line-up includes three features directed by women, including this rarely-seen 1962 drama from Hong Eun-won — one of the few female directors of her time to make a full-length drama. A Woman Judge was restored from a damaged 16mm print and the scratchy source and missing scenes can be distracting. But even through the hazy patina of celluloid decay, the plot about a female judge, a jealous husband, and a murder scheme is thoroughly engaging. The drama of the script at times overwhelms the film’s social themes but, as we learn in Hommage, a fictionalized story about the restoration of A Woman Judge (see below), this female director may have had limited control over the sub-par script.
Available to stream here from June 17–July 3.
HOMMAGE
Writer-director Shin Su-won honors the female directors who came before her in this film about Ji-Wan (played by Lee Jeong-eun), a struggling female director who’s tasked with with the underpaid but important work of restoring what else but… A Woman Judge! As often happens with the Korean Film Festival, certain actors appear in multiple films, and the resonances can be fascinating. In this case, Kwon Hae-hyo, who usually plays a director in the films of Hong Sang-soo (see In Front of Your Face, below), here plays Ji-Wan’s unsupportive husband. Though lacking the high-budget sheen of The Book of Fish, this Hommage is both a love letter to cinema and a stark look at the difficulties of preserving our cinematic past.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, June 24 at 7:00 pm
ALONERS
Director Hong Sung-eun makes her directorial debut with this sobering look at what is known Korea as honjok, a phenomenon in which young people live in relative isolation and are increasingly reluctant to make strong social connections. While this trend began before the pandemic, Aloners resonates that much more strongly given events of the past two years. Gong Seung-yeon (a popular K-drama actress) plays Jina, the most productive worker in a soul-sucking gig at a call center. While she adeptly follows the customer service scripts she’s trained to deliver with cool efficiency, she has no idea how to deal with the people in front of her — including the father she blames for her mother’s death.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, June 26 at 1:00 pm
If you want to see the latest from a favorite arthouse director:
INTRODUCTION and IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE
Prolific director Hong Sang-soo has churned out more than two dozen feature films this century alone — until the pandemic halted his streak, he was averaging two movies a year. Hong specializes in variations on what at first seems like a limited template: chatty scripts and long takes with characters working through various domestic indiscretions that are wrapped up in little more than an hour. This basic structure, however, has resulted in a rich variety of moral dramas.
The two films Hong released in 2021, however, feel subtly different from his previous work. Introduction follows the life of Young-ho (played by Shin Seok-ho), a struggling young actor struggling with intergenerational conflict between himself and his divorced parents, as well as a fraught relationship with his girlfriend. The remarkable In Front of Your Face is a drama about mortality starring Lee Hye-young as Sangok, a retired actress who harbors a secret. In a series of long conversations with her sister, Sangok’s pleasant but reticent demeanor betrays how little they know about each other. When she meets a veteran director (played by Kwon Hae-hyo) who may want to hire (and seduce) her, she finally reveals her deep-seated pain. Lee’s performance as a woman forced to take stock of her creative and personal life as she battles with serious illness is brilliant.
Watch the trailer for Introduction, which screens Sunday, June 12 at 1:00 pm
Watch the trailer for In Front of Your Face, which screens Sunday, June 12 at 3:00 pm
