Korean
A Distant Place : a finely nuanced Korean queer family drama
A Distant Place, the debut feature film from Korean filmmaker Kuo-Young Park, and is a remarkable finely nuanced tale that evolved into such an exquisite film as beautiful as the stunning rural setting. It is the first Korean queer film that I have ever seen and I have to confess although I was unsure…
House of Hummingbird : a Korean queer coming-of-age tale
This debut feature film from Bora Kim of a quiet and confused 14 year old Korean schoolgirl is loosely based on her own giving a real sense of authenticity to this unique coming-of-age story. Plus its also set in 1994 which proved a significant year in South Korea’s history. Eighth-grader Eun-hee (Ji-hu Park) is the…
In Between Seasons
LGBT movies from Korea are still very much a rarity and most of them are based on the fact that although homosexuality is legal in the country, culturally it is still not accepted by most of the country. In fact, the first ever Korean LGBT rights organization Beyond The Rainbow was officially recognized last year after…
The Handmaiden
The celebrated South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook manages to pack a lot of detail into the entire 2 1/2 hours of the erotic and exotic drama of his latest stunning epic The Handmaiden. Park has adapted Sarah Walter’s historical crime novel Fingersmith which was set in Victorian Britain, and transposed to Japanese occupied Korea…
