Cinespot : 2002 Kima Film Festival

2002 Kima Film Festival

The 2nd annual Kima Film Festival was successfully held at UC Berkeley this year. The theme of this year's festival is "Representation of Identities in Korean Cinema: Korean Women Filmmakers and Korean American Filmmaking". Most of the films picked by the festival committee are either made by women filmmakers or reflect certain aspects of women's perspective in Korea. The six feature films being screened include Take Care of My Cat, Waikiki Brothers, No Blood No Tears, My Sassy Girl, Bad Guy and Surprise Party (US Premiere). Video and documentaries Beautiful Survival, First Person Plural, The Women Outside and The Murmuring were screened. For a list of information about all the films, events and guests of the festival, please scroll down to the bottom of this page.

Just a little background information about the film festival, Kima, which stands for Korean studies In Media Arts, is a Korean-American media arts organization and it aims to serve a growing constituency that includes Korean film- and video- makers both in Korea and America, media scholars and students, and the local Korean American communities in the Bay area. The film festival is supposed to be held annually. In 2001, the 1st Kima Film Festival was held at San Francisco State University. This year, with the help from UC Berkeley and various faculty advisors, they moved the festival here to Berkeley.

Since our editor K. Lui and I myself both live in the Bay Area, and we are great fans of Korean cinema, we decided to attend the film festival. We bought the festival package (US$20) and attended all six feature films screenings that were scheduled to play from September 6 to September 8. Here below I would do a coverage of what we saw at the film festival. One exciting remark I wanted to make is, our editor K. Lui, with the help of his friend Wilda Wong and Kima's president Jongsuk Lee, managed to conduct an exclusive interview with promising actor/director Ryu Seung-Wan (Dir: No Blood No Tears, Die Bad). The interview will be compiled by K. Lui and published very soon. Remember to bookmark our website and check back often!

I am not sure if Kima was having problems with the budget or what (They are a non-profit organization), this year, the film festival really lacked promotion. Honestly, I didn't hear about it until K. Lui informed me a couple of days before the festival started. Anyway, I still got my ticket on time. One thing I wanted to praise the staff of Kima is that they responded to emails really quick.

September 6 2002

All of the feature films were screened at Wheeler Auditorium. It is a big theater, I think it is also a lecture hall. To me, it is definitely a better place to watch a movie than the new PFA theater. There are more seats and the seats are more comfortable. The number of volunteers working for Kima this year were more than I expected. I believe most of them are Koreans, still, there is no problem if you don't speak Korean at all. The program guide was free. They also have some blue T-shirts for sale, but very few people actually asked about that.

The first screening, Take Care of My Cat, was generally welcome by the audience. Obviously, it was not full house at that night. The crowds were smaller than I expected, and most of the audiences are Koreans. Nevertheless, the audiences' response was positive. You could feel from the atmosphere that the people there really loved the film. The only flaw was that the show started little late.

There was an opening reception followed by the screening. Many people stayed for it and most of the guests also showed up.

September 7 2002

Three films were screened on the second day of the festival, and they were scheduled in a row. That means, if you wanted to see all three of them, you probably wouldn't have time to take a break or eat anything in between, since there was only a five to ten minute break between each screening. K. Lui and I were one of those fanatics who went through all the screenings and ended up having our dinner at 12:30am after the last screening of the night.

The first film of the day, Waikiki Brothers, is a traumatic drama. It is a slow-paced and miserable tale of a musicial band. There are a lot of singing scenes in the film. Fortunately, the subtitles are able to translate the lyrics of the songs. It is especially important for those who can't speak Korean since the lyrics are crucial to the plot of the film. As far as I saw, this film was least popular in the festival. It had the fewest audience and the reaction was moderate.

After Waikiki Brothers was No Blood No Tears. What was notable is that the director of this film Ryu Seung Wan was there seeing the film with us. No Blood No Tears was a fast-paced action adventure flick. It contains humors, action and gun fight elements. Compared to the pure drama Waikiki Brothers, this film is definitely more entertaining and exciting, and that explains why it was much better received than Waikiki Brothers. An Q&A section with director Ryu Seung Wan was held after the screening. Most of the audiences asked in Korean, but they were considerate enough to translate their questions to English themselves for those who can't speak Korean (including K. Lui and me) there. Since the director can't speak English, he answered all the questions in Korean and the MC of the festival acted as an interpreter. Most of the questions were around the film No Blood No Tears.

After a ten-minute break, the last film of the night, which was also the climax of the festival - My Sassy Girl , was up on the big screen! It was absolutely the most popular film of the festival. It had the highest attendence and all of the spectators were eagerly waiting for the film to start before the screening. The laughters and applauses during the screening were also the most frequent among all the films in the festival. I myself have watched this film on VCD before, but it was still a very nice experience to watch it on the big screen. The screening ended at midnight.

After watching three films in a row, K. Lui and I were both exhausted. What we thought was that, it would be nice if Kima could schedule the screening a little earlier and made the interval in between longer, especially the interval between the first and the second screening, so that people could have time to go for dinner. Same as the first night, the only flaw was that the screening did not start right on time.

September 8 2002

There were two forum sessions in the afternoon at Dwinelle Hall, with director Ryu Seung-Wan and Deann Borshay Liem as the guests. K. Lui went to Dwinelle Hall and did his exclusive interview with Ryu Seung-Wan after his forum session, while I myself only attended the feature screening in the evening.

The first screening of the evening was Bad Guy. It is a very weird and bizarre film. One of the interesting take is that the protagonist has only one line of dialogue throughout the whole film. Because of the strong sexual content, I noticed some female audiences stepped out of the auditorium in the middle of the film and never came back. It is definitely not a film for everyone, but still, it is unique in style and the narrative structure.

Surprise was the last film being screened at the festival. It is one of the latest films of the year, as it was released in Korea in July 2002. It features Shin Ha-Gyun and Lee Yo-Won, both are rising new actors in Korea. Similar to My Sassy Girl, it is a light-hearted comedy and was generally welcome by the audience. The laughters were frequent. After the screening, there was an Q&A section with the producer of this film, Mr. Lee Choon-Yun. However, most of the audiences left before Mr. Lee walked up to the stage. I was little pissed off by that, I think the audience should show some respect for the guest who has travelled long way from Korea to support the film festival. Mr. Lee was generous enough to thank the remaining audience and ended the Q&A section promptly. Followed by that was a closing ceremony, it was accompanied by a short video made by Kima. All the guests and the staff of Kima also showed up on stage and thanked everyone who has come.

Remarks

It was a successful film festival. Apart from the cancellation of one screening, everything ran smooth and every events were carried out as planned. The guests were well prepared and provided insightful ideas and thoughts for the audiences. Just as I have mentioned above, there were two problems only, first, the lack of promotion; second, failure of keeping the schedule right on time. Nevertheless, as a non-profit organization, I am certain everyone at Kima had already tried their best. I wish this film festival will grow as a significant event in the future.

written by: Kantorates

Schedule

Screening (at Wheeler Auditorium, UCB)
Take Care of My Cat (112 min, 35mm, 2001) 8:30 pm Sep 6(Fri), 2002
Waikiki Brothers (109 min, 35mm, 2001) 5:30 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
No Blood No Tears (116 min, 35mm, 2002) 7:30 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
My Sassy Girl (112 min, 35mm, 2001) 9:45 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
Bad Guy (100 min, 35mm, 2002) 5:40 pm Sep 8(Sun), 2002
Surprise Party (99 min, 35mm, 2002) 7:30 pm Sep 8(Sun), 2002

Forum (at Dwinelle 142 and Wheeler Auditorium, UCB)
Filmmaking in Korea 4:30 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
Talk with Director: Seung Wan Ryoo 2:00 pm & 3:00 pm Sep 8(Sun), 2002
Talk with Director: Deann Borshay Liem 2:00 pm & 3:00 pm Sep 8(Sun), 2002

Screening (at Dwinelle 142 and Wheeler Auditorium, UCB)
Beautiful Survival (40 min, Video, 2001) 12:10 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
First Person Plural (56 min, Video, 2000) 1:00 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
The Women Outside (53 min, Video, 1995) 2:20 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
The Murmuring (93 min, Video, 1995) 11:00 am Sep 8(Sun), 2002

Forum (at Dwinelle 142, UCB)
Bringing Women's Perspectives to Korean Film 3:30 pm Sep 7(Sat), 2002
Work-in-progress report: Memories of Korean War 1:00 pm Sep 8(Sun), 2002

Special Guests:
Choon Yun Lee(Producer, CEO Cine 2000)
Seung Wan Ryoo (Dir. No Blood No Tears)
Eun Mi An (Line Producer)
Hye Jung Park (Dir. Producer, The Women Outside)
Deann Borshay (Dir. Producer, First Person Plural)
Chul Shin (Byonsa)
Grace Yoo (Professor, Asian-American Studies at SFSU)
Sul Gi Kim (Videographer and Editor)