April 23–May 8, 2008
The Department of Film presents the first complete U.S. retrospective of writer-director Kim Ki-Duk (b. 1960, Bonghwa), a self-taught maverick Korean filmmaker whose work has enriched international cinema with its luminous intensity. This fourteen-film exhibition includes several features never before seen in the U.S., giving audiences a rare chance to chart the development of the director's sensuous, sensational imagery and wild and haunting narratives.
Kim Ki-Duk was a factory worker, soldier, priest-in-training, and, between 1992 and 1995, a street artist in France, where he discovered cinema through films like Leos Carax's Les amants de Pont-Neuf and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (both 1991). After winning a screenwriting competition in Korea, Kim was able to make, without any formal training, his first feature, Crocodile (1996). Kim's debut film, long out of circulation, heralded the arrival of a furious young self-taught talent with a vision that, brutal though it is, is grounded in redemption. Over the next eleven years, thirteen more films followed, including three of his best-known films in the United States, the libidinous The Isle (2000), the Buddhist-inflected Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003), and an elliptical treatise on invisibility, 3-Iron (2004).
Kim's films cohere into a vivid and compelling body of work characterized by sweeping camera movements and long, richly composed shots. They are populated by characters, uneasy in their social situations, who adopt silence as a protection and whose reactions tend to be brutal; what distinguishes these narratives is what follows this savagery. His films take place in a world sometimes circumscribed by water, but always situated in a cinematic space a couple of degrees sharper than reality. All films are directed by Kim, from South Korea, and in Korean with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.
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Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art; and Hahn Dong-Sin, founder, Open Work, New York. This retrospective is presented in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Service (Song Soo-Keun, Director), New York, and with the support of the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Korean Film Council, and Korean Film Archive in Seoul. The Department of Film is grateful to the Korean producers of Kim Ki-Duk's films (Cineclick Asia, Prime Entertainment, Dauri Entertainment) and the American distributors (Tartan Films, Sony Pictures Classics, Lifesize, Empire Pictures) for the loan of 35mm English subtitled prints for this retrospective.
2 comments:
Hi, we're fans of Kim too.
Hey I am also big fan of Kim. I always love to watch her each movie. Do you also love watching her movies.? I have big collection of movies..If you want I can also share with you..
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