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Rising directors explore fear, fantasy

By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter

JEONJU ― When ticket sales opened on April 13 for the 11th Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF), it took just two minutes for tickets to sell out for one of its signature projects, "Short! Short! Short!"

The project brings together three rising Korean directors ― Lee Kyoo-man, Han Jihyeh and Kim Tae-gon. Following last year's thematic focus on money, "Short! Short! Short! 2010" had the directors work with the idea of fear and fantasy in the spatial realm of the theater.

The omnibus opens with a harrowing and gripping segment by Lee, which provides a strong base for the other two shorts. "The Famished" showcases the hallmarks of powerful and creative storytelling that is only possible in a short, but poignant, impeccably produced and lasting, film of 27 minutes.

The old becomes new again, as traditional "Hahoe" wooden mask-clad actors seize the moment on a dark stage. Halmi (Granny) and Imae (Fool) ask each other "Who are you?" but neither ghost is able to answer, having consumed their memories in order to satiate their hunger.

Myeong-jin (Kwak Min-suk), a rather confused-looking man who had been watching the play, begins to feel unbearable hunger. Meanwhile Gwang-tae, another famished fellow, asks if the dog tied outside belongs to him. When Myeong-jin is unable to answer, Gwang-tae persuades him that they should eat it.

The film has nothing to do with Korea's dog meat-eating culture. Rather, it poses Proustian questions about the imperfection of memory as well as the (in)human instinct for survival. The film, made in collaboration with theater director Jo Yong-seok, captures the transiency and spatial dimension of performance art, as well as its most delusive aspect as the most fictitious moments become the most convincing.

"I tried telling the story through a theatrical play, with the idea that spirits can only survive after death by feeding on memories. It's been a long time since I worked on a short film, and it was a short but full experience", the director told reporters Friday, following the press screening of the film. He made a noted feature debut with the medical thriller "Wide Awake" starring popular actor Kim Myung-min.

A point of interest is that the lead actor Kwak shed 16 kilograms to play the part, while the supporting actors who gave life to the traditional Korean characters rehearsed their parts for two months prior to the shoot.

The project takes a sharp turn with some B-movie zaniness, complete with splashes of bright, ketchup-like blood and anime-like depictions of fantasy with doses of Greek mythology. Han's appropriately titled "The Loneliness of Butcher Boy" is set in a small town, where more than a dozen teenagers are found dead under mysterious circumstances. Tae-shik (played by the charming TV personality Lee Hyun-woo-I), a sensitive teenager whose vegetarianism worries his father, the local butcher, discovers that the fate of the town lies in his hands. Will he be able to face up to his fears and kill the Minotaur, the monster with the head of a bull?

"I read about the myth of the Minotaur, and tried to make a new interpretation of it. It started from questioning whether it's a man with a bull's head or a bull with a human body?" said the director, who won the 2008 JIFF Korean Short Films Competition. Model-actress Kim Diena makes her big screen debut.

Kim Tae-gon, who made a critically acclaimed debut with the horror flick "The Pot", attempts to bring a comic twist to the thriller genre in the latest short "Ten Million".

While he took a serious look into human greed and religious fanaticism for his noted feature film, he turned to what could be seen as a more personal (and unfortunately self-deprecating) issue that filmmakers rather than regularly moviegoers could relate to. In this age where domestic blockbusters are drawing 10 million people, a series of murders claims the lives of directors that fail to meet that target (i.e. indulging in "artistic masturbation" and putting their producers in debt).

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