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New Korean features at PiFan

This year the Puchon International Fanastic Film Festival (PiFan) presented a wide range of new Korean features including violent rural drama Bedevilled by JANG Cheol-su, which screened in Cannes' Critics Week section this year.  A total of 54 Korean features and shorts participated in the genre-focused fest.  
In PiFan’s World Fantastic Cinema section were the world premieres of five Korean features: Hero, a new take on the vampire genre by director KIM Hong-ik; Red, a love-on-the-road movie by director KO Eun-ki; mystery-drama Sin of a Family by director MIN Byung-jin; comic-fantasy The Uninvited by LEE Eung-il; and thesp-thriller The Last Acting Lesson by director SEO Seoung-man.  2009 year-end superhero hit Woochi by CHOI Dong-hoon and the 2010 spring-released psychological horror Bestseller starring top Korean actress UHM Jeong-hwa rounded out this section. 
Newly titled section Vision Express presented two Korean world premieres, film-within-a-film drama Encounter by LIM Tai-hyung and transcendental love-story Try to Remember by LIM Jin-pyung.  In PiFan’s Forbidden Zone was the world premiere of X-rated queer omnibus feature All About My Father by directors LEE Sang-woo, KIM Hun, and HWANG Hee-kyung.  

Also making its world premiere at PiFan was school-horror Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp by YOO Sun-dong.  The sequel to 2008’s successful summer horror, the new feature was the festival’s closing film and will have its nationwide release on July 28.    

PiFan’s continued efforts to excavate Korea’s cinematic styles and flourishes from the past resulted this year in a retrospective of director LEE Doo-yong’s 1970’s kick-action films, presenting six features including the Single-legged Man series, which has been recently restored by the Korean Film Archive.  

Nigel D’Sa (KOFIC)