SONG Il-gon, who studied at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, has made mainly art films. <Liver and Potato> and <The Picnic>, which he made during his studies in Poland, still generate interest among moviegoers. [WONG Kar-wai] regards <Liver and Potato> highly and asked SONG to collaborate with him, but he declined the offer, saying he wanted to make his own films. <The Picnic> won a Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival's short film...More

SONG Il-gon, who studied at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, has made mainly art films. <Liver and Potato> and <The Picnic>, which he made during his studies in Poland, still generate interest among moviegoers. [WONG Kar-wai] regards <Liver and Potato> highly and asked SONG to collaborate with him, but he declined the offer, saying he wanted to make his own films. <The Picnic> won a Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival's short film competition. His feature debut, <Flower Island> (2001), was an auteurist film that illustrated the director’s artistic temperament, far removed from commercial interests. SONG has said he was influenced by the works of [Krzysztof KIESLOWSK], [Andrei TARKOVSKY], and [HOU Hsiao-hsien]. He made <Git - Feathers in the Wind> (2005) and <Magicians> (2005) on commission and forayed into the documentary genre with a story about the descendents of early Korean settlers in Cuba in <Dance of Time> (2009). His new film <Always> was the opening film of the 16th Busan International Film Festival in 2011, making its world premiere at the newly built Busan Cinema Center. The film is somewhat of a departure from SONG’s previous works, with a star cast including [SO Ji-sub] and [HAN Hyo-joo] as well as a simpler plot and structure intended for general audiences. Less