Truth and Dare: New York Korean Film Festival 2005

The increasing status of Korean cinema is one of the more interesting recent developments of the international film scene. Not so very long ago, South Korean cinema was all but unknown to everyone except the most savvy and diligent insiders. Over the past five years or so, Korean film has increased its international profile, with Korean film becoming more and more of a major presence at film festivals around the world.

Such directors as Kim Ki-duk (who achieved the remarkable feat of winning prizes for two of his recent films, Samaritan Girl (2004) and 3-Iron (2004) at Berlin and Venice within the same year), Park Chan-wook (whose Oldboy (2003) was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival last year), and Hong Sang-soo (Turning Gate [2002], Woman is the Future of Man [2004]) have received considerable (and often controversial) critical attention.

Unfortunately, this attention has yet to translate into increased popularity for Korean films released stateside. Some reasons can be cited for this, for example culturally specific elements that are unfamiliar for moviegoers, or perhaps the specialized (one could say ghettoized) marketing of such recent releases as Park Chan-wook's Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), and Kim Ki-duk's Bad Guy (2001) as "Asian extreme" cinema. However, South Korea has one of the world's most vibrant, innovative, and financially robust film industries, and the great variety of this cinema is only barely hinted at in the films that manage to get stateside distribution.

Film festivals, then, represent the rare opportunities to get more of a complete picture of this cinema. "Truth and Dare: New York Korean Film Festival 2005," running from Sept 2-11, 2005, boasts an impressive sampling of contemporary Korean cinema, both popular and critically successful films.