링컨센터 홍상수 감독 동시상영 회고전(THE HONG SANGSOO MULTIVERSE: 4/8-17, 5/4-10)
HONG SANGSOO MULTIVERSE
A RETROSPECTIVE OF DOUBLE FEATURES
링컨센터 필름소사이어티가 홍상수 감독 동시상영 회고전 'The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse: A Retrospective of Double Features'을 4월 8일부터 17일, 5월 4일부터 10일까지 2회에 걸쳐 열린다. 이번 영화제에서는 2편을 동시상영한다. 5월 10일 오후 7시 상영작은 비밀인데, 2022 베를린영화제 은곰상(심사위원대상)작 '소설가의 영화(The Novelist's Film)'일 가능성이 농후하다.
한편, 링컨센터필름소사이어티 프로그래머 데니스 림(Dennis Lim)은 오는 8월 홍상수 감독의 영화 '극장전(Tale of Cinem, 2005)'을 집중 분석한 평론서 '테일 오브 시네마(Tale of Cinema)'를 오는 8월 출간한다. 홍상수 감독은 5월 8일 데니스 림과 대화의 시간을 연다. 2017년 이후 뉴욕 첫 공개석상에 출연하는 것이다.
홍상수 감독의 전작 회고전이 처음은 아니다. 퀸즈의 미영화박물관(The Museum of Modern Image)에서는 2016년 'The Tales of Cinema: The Films of Hong Sang-soo”: A Complete Retrospective'(6/3-19)을 열었다. https://www.filmlinc.org
홍상수 감독은 1961년 서울에서 태어나 중앙대 영화과를 중퇴한 후 캘리포니아 미술공예대학(California College of Arts and Crafts) 졸업 후 시카고아트인스티튜트(Art Institute of Chicago)에서 석사학위를 받았다. 1992년 귀국 후 SBS-TV '작가와 화제작'의 PD로 일하다 1996년 '돼지가 우물에 빠진 날'로 데뷔했다.
영화 '하하하'로 칸영화제 주목할만한 시선상(2010), '우리 선희'로 로카르노 영화제 은표범상(감독상, 2013), '지금은맞고그때는틀리다'로 로카르노영화제 황금표범상(대상, 2015), '도망친 여자'로 베를린영화제 은곰상(감독상, 2020), '인트로덕션'으로 베를린영화제 은곰상(각본상, 2021), '소설가의 영화'로 베를린영화제 은곰상(심사위원대상, 2022)을 수상했다. 한국예술종합학교와 건국대 영화과 교수를 지냈다.
APRIL 8-17 and MAY 4-10, Film at Lincoln Center
Photo courtesy Sandro Baebler
New York, NY (March 24, 2022) – Film at Lincoln Center announces The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse: A Retrospective of Double Features, offering a thorough compendium of the filmmaker’s career, through a two-part series running from April 8-17 and May 4-10.
Few if any contemporary directors have amassed as vast and prolific a body of work as Hong Sangsoo. Working at an unparalleled clip of productivity, the South Korean auteur has helmed 25 of his 27 features this century, each a valuable addition to an oeuvre that returns time and again to the same themes, preoccupations, and strategies, but always with some fresh angle, some radically new way of telling a familiar story. Hong’s films seize the material of everyday life—regret, infidelity, professional frustrations, the casual cruelty and brutish folly of men and women alike (but especially men)—in the service of exploring psychology and metaphysics in elegant, subtly profound ways. In a structural gesture befitting Hong, our two-part survey consists entirely of double features, with each film paired differently each time it screens and special 2-for-1 pricing. This career-spanning retrospective, timed to the release of In Front of Your Face (NYFF59), will also feature in-person appearances by Hong, who will return to NYC for the first time since NYFF55 in 2017.
The extensive retrospective of films directed by Hong includes a treasure trove of NYFF selections, such as The Day After, shot in moody black and white, which tracks a roundelay of mistaken identity and déjà vu; Hill of Freedom, a series of disordered scenes based on undated letters received by a woman from her Japanese lover; Hotel by the River, following two tales which intersect at a riverside hotel; Right Now, Wrong Then, a bifurcated tale of an art-film director and a drunken night he shares with a fledgling artist; Woman on the Beach, a classic example of Hong’s trademark double-narrative structure; The Woman Who Ran, a comic triptych of thwarted connections and everyday dysfunction; and Yourself and Yours, a break-up/make-up comedy unlike any other, suffused with sophisticated modernist mystery.
Additional highlights in the retrospective include, but are not limited to: The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well, Hong’s acclaimed feature debut, which begins as a study of an affair between a temperamental writer and a married woman; his follow-up, The Power of Kangwon Province, concerning a popular retreat in Kangwon, a mountainous region near Seoul; Claire’s Camera, starring Isabelle Huppert as a French tourist who enters into an unexpected friendship with a Korean sales agent; the audacious The Day He Arrives, a signature Hong film regarding a filmmaker-turned-professor who arrives in Seoul to meet an old friend; Hahaha, which follows two friends comparing notes on their separate trips to the same resort town; In Another Country, a breezy vacation comedy of misunderstanding and desire, with Isabelle Huppert as three different women who visit a Korean seaside village; the surprising and moving Like You Know It All, which tracks a hapless movie director invited to serve on a film-festival jury; Night and Day, Hong’s ambling portrait of midlife male discombobulation; ; Tale of Cinema, characteristically composed of two halves, with two different men encountering very similar circumstances with crucial differences; Woman is the Future of Man, a key work in the development of Hong’s approach to examining relations between men and women; and perhaps Hong’s most achingly personal film, On the Beach at Night Alone, following an actress (Kim Minhee) who is hiding out in Hamburg after the revelation of her affair with a married filmmaker.
As a surprise treat for fans of Hong’s prolific body of work, a secret screening will take place on May 10, whose title will not be revealed until the film’s introduction.
On Friday, April 8 at 6pm, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish will host “Film Comment Live: The Hong Show with Dennis Lim,” to celebrate the commencement of the two-part retrospective. In this special conversation, Lim, the author of a forthcoming monograph on Hong’s Tale of Cinema from Fireflies Press, will have his expertise put to the test with a series of preselected questions from Film Comment contributors about the South Korean auteur’s elliptical, endlessly generative oeuvre. The event is free and open to the public.
The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse: A Retrospective of Double Features is organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan. Presented in partnership with the Korea Society.
Acknowledgements:
Cinema Guild; Finecut; Korean FIlm Archive; Jeonju International Film Festival.
Tickets for part one of the retrospective go on sale Friday, March 25 at noon. Tickets for part two of the retrospective go on sale Friday, April 1 at noon. Special 2-for-1 double feature pricing! Tickets for both films in the double feature are $15; $12 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $10 for FLC Members. Become a member today! Learn more at www.filmlinc.org.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films will take place at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W 65th St)
or the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 W. 65th Street).
Claire’s Camera 클레어의 카메라
France/South Korea, 2017, 69m
English, French, and Korean with English subtitles
Hong’s 20th feature—one of his three films to premiere in 2017—is a light, sunny divertissement shot on the fly during the Cannes Film Festival. Set far from the red-carpet pomp, Claire’s Camera is a cautionary tale about mixing business with pleasure, and in its way no less philosophical than other recent Hong works. A sales agent (Kim Minhee) is fired mid-festival for her “dishonesty”—which turns out to be code for sleeping with a director who’s also involved with her boss. The revelations emerge with the help of a French tourist named Claire (Isabelle Huppert), a detective of sorts who helps others see their situations more clearly. Kim and Huppert make for a delightful pair amid the kind of cross-cultural comedy that also defined Hong’s Huppert-starring In Another Country.
Sunday, April 17 at 1:30pm (screening with Lost in the Mountains, paired with Hotel by the River)
Sunday, May 8 at 6:30pm (paired with Night and Day)
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well 돼지가 우물에 빠진날
South Korea, 1996, 115m
Hong’s acclaimed feature debut begins as a study of an affair between a temperamental writer (Kim Eui-sung) and a married woman (Lee Eun-kyung), and gradually zooms outward to reveal its tragic ripple effects on the lives of a germaphobic businessman (Park Jin-sung) and a young movie-theater ticket-taker (Cho Eun-sook). Though more somber in tone than many of Hong’s subsequent seriocomedies, this multi-strand drama displays his masterful touch in its unsparing look at the complexities of love (particularly when combined with alcohol) and the heart-tearing void that remains in its absence.
Thursday, May 5 at 2:00pm (paired with Grass)
Sunday, May 8 at 3:30pm (paired with In Front of Your Face*)
The Day After 그후
South Korea, 2017, 92m
Shot in moody black and white, The Day After opens with book publisher Bongwan (Kwon Hae-hyo) fending off his wife’s heated accusations of infidelity. At the office, it’s the first day for his new assistant, Areum (Kim Minhee), whose predecessor was Bongwan’s lover. Mistaken identity, repetition compulsion, and déjà vu figure into the narrative, as the film entangles its characters across multiple timelines through an intricate geometry of desire, suspicion, and betrayal. The end result is one of Hong’s most plaintive and philosophical works. An NYFF55 Main Slate selection.
Saturday, April 9 at 4:45pm (paired with The Day He Arrives)
Saturday, April 16 at 8:00pm (paired with Hill of Freedom)
The Day He Arrives 북촌방향
South Korea, 2011, 79m
In this signature Hong film, a creatively blocked director currently teaching film (Yoo Joon-sang) arrives in Seoul to meet with an old friend, only for that friend to seemingly stand him up. He then sets about wandering the streets, encountering several women and drinking a fair amount of soju along the way. The night draws to a close and a new day dawns, though this new day feels suspiciously similar to the one that preceded it… An audacious, Buñuelian black-and-white experiment in repetition, narrative time, and casting, The Day He Arrives encapsulates many of the themes and formal strategies that continue to inform Hong’s work today.
Saturday, April 9 at 3:00pm (paired with The Day After)
Monday, April 11 at 6:30pm (paired with Yourself and Yours)
Grass 풀잎
South Korea, 2018, 66m
Sitting in a café, typing on a laptop, Areum (Kim Minhee) eavesdrops on three dramatic situations unfolding in her general vicinity: a young woman bound for Europe and a male friend erupting in vitriolic accusations, a washed-up actor trying to sweet-talk his way into staying with an old friend, and a narcissistic actor-director (Jung Jin-young) trying to rope a young writer into his next project. Playing out largely in long-take two-shots, these conversations create a kind of never-ending theatrical performance, using Areum as the anchor. With its raw emotions and outward formal simplicity masking a complex episodic approach, Grass finds Korean master Hong setting up a fascinating narrative problem for himself and solving it as only he can.
Thursday, May 5 at 4:15pm (paired with The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well)
Friday, May 6 at 8:15pm (paired with Hill of Freedom/List; at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)
Hahaha 하하하
South Korea, 2010, 115m
A playful, sophisticated meditation on doubling and narration’s relation to the unconscious, masquerading as a gentle summer comedy, Hahaha begins with two friends (Kim Sang-kyung and Yoo Joon-sang) meeting for drinks and comparing notes on their separate trips to the same resort town, and the follies and misadventures they got into while there. But unbeknownst to them, a third party eavesdropping on their conversation discerns quite a bit of overlap and redundancy in the friends’ anecdotes, suggesting, however improbably, that the two men have managed to encounter the exact same cast of characters in their travels.
Sunday, April 10 at 6:00pm (paired with Introduction)
Tuesday, April 12 at 3:00pm (paired with The Power of Kangwon Province)
Hill of Freedom 자유의 언덕
South Korea, 2014, 66m
English, Japanese, and Korean with English subtitles
Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryô Kase), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. Alternately funny and haunting, Hill of Freedom is a series of disordered scenes based on the letters, echoing the cultural dislocation felt by Mori as he tries to make himself understood in halting English. At what point did he drink himself into a lonely stupor? Did he sleep with the waitress from the Hill of Freedom café (Moon So-ri) before or after he despaired of ever seeing Kwon again? An NYFF52 selection.
Saturday, April 16 at 6:30pm (paired with The Day After)
Friday, May 6 at 6:30pm (screening with List, paired with Grass; at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)
Hotel by the River 강변 호텔
South Korea, 2018, 96m
Two tales intersect at a riverside hotel: an elderly poet (Ki Joo-bong), invited to stay there for free by the owner and sensing his life drawing to a close, summons his two estranged sons; and a young woman (Kim Minhee) nursing a recently broken heart is visited by a friend who tries to console her. At times these threads overlap; at others, they run tantalizingly close but remain detached. Using a stark black-and-white palette and handheld cinematography (by frequent DP Kim Hyung-ku), Hong crafts an affecting examination of family, mortality, and the ways in which we attempt to heal wounds old and fresh. An NYFF56 selection.
Thursday, April 14 at 1:00pm (paired with Introduction)
Sunday, April 17 at 3:30pm (paired with Claire’s Camera/Lost in the Mountains)
In Another Country 다른 나라에서
South Korea, 2012, 89m
English, French, and Korean with English subtitles
The figure of the doppelgänger, a frequent motif in Hong’s oeuvre, receives one of its most radical treatments in this breezy vacation comedy. Isabelle Huppert stars as three different women—a French filmmaker, a philanderer, and a divorcée, respectively—who, across three discrete but overlapping stories, each visit a seaside resort town and each encounter a Korean filmmaker (Kwon Hae-hyo), his pregnant wife (Moon So-ri), and an amorous lifeguard (Yoo Joon-sang). At once a structurally complex exercise in narrative repetition and a charming, lively comedy of misunderstanding and desire, In Another Country is one of the funniest and most surprising installments in Hong’s body of work.
Friday, April 8 at 9:00pm (paired with Oki’s Movie)
Saturday, April 9 at 7:15pm (paired with Our Sunhi/List)
In Front of Your Face 당신 얼굴 앞에서
South Korea, 2021, 85m
After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress (Lee Hye-young) has returned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one day in Seoul, via various encounters—including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives in her converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like to make a comeback—we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the big secret that’s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of the spiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sangsoo in a particularly contemplative mood; it’s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace and a sick joke. An NYFF59 selection. A Cinema Guild release (opening on May 6 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center).
*Admission to the May 6 screening of Nobody’s Daughter Haewon and the May 8 screening of The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well will be free with a ticket to any screening of In Front of Your Face between May 6-8.
Introduction 인트로덕션
South Korea, 2021, 66m
In Hong’s steady yet playful hands, even the simplest premise can become a puzzle box of unpredictable, poignant human behavior. There could be no better example of his casual mastery than this breezy yet complexly structured study of a group of characters—most crucially parents and their grown offspring—trying to relate to one another via a series of thwarted or stunted meetings and introductions, centered around a young man (Shin Seok-ho) on the cusp of adulthood, confused about his romantic relationships and professional goals. It’s a film that keeps opening up to the viewer through digressions and reversals, leading to one of Hong’s most amusingly unsettling soju-soaked outbursts. An NYFF59 selection.
Sunday, April 10 at 8:15pm (paired with Hahaha)
Thursday, April 14 at 2:45pm (paired with Hotel by the River)
Like You Know It All 잘 알지도 못하면서
South Korea, 2009, 126m
Something like a dose of mortification and misadventure, Like You Know It All follows a hapless movie director invited to serve on a film-festival jury. True to the title (drawn from Hong’s customarily candid dialogue), the young filmmaker jousts with friends old and new in a tragicomic examination of self-absorption, wayward sexual impulses, and all manner of misbehavior. Amidst the soju-fueled blackouts, inappropriate confessions, and ill-advised sallies across the gender divide, Like You Know It All coheres into yet another complex, surprising, and moving work.
Tuesday, April 12 at 8:45pm (paired with Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors)
Thursday, April 14 at 6:30pm (paired with On the Beach at Night Alone)
List 리스트(단편)
South Korea, 2011, 29m
In this breezy and absurdly funny short (shot and acted by the cast and crew of In Another Country immediately after its production wrapped), a woman (Minari Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung) and her daughter (Jung Yu-mi) decamp for the coastal town of Mohang, where the younger woman compiles a checklist of personal goals for the trip that she winds up working her way through as if by accident.
Saturday, April 9 at 9:00pm (screening with Our Sunhi, paired with In Another Country)
Friday, May 6 at 6:30pm (screening with Hill of Freedom, paired with Grass; at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)
Lost in the Mountains 첩첩산중(단편)
South Korea, 2009, 31m
In this, one of Hong’s rare shorts, a young writer drives from Seoul to Jeonju to visit her best friend, but winds up getting entangled with a former professor and an ex-boyfriend, resulting in a journey of mortification and self-discovery.
Friday, April 15 at 1:30pm (screening with Our Sunhi, paired with The Woman Who Ran)
Sunday, April 17 at 1:30pm (screening with Claire’s Camera, paired with Hotel by the River)
Night and Day 밤과 낮
South Korea, 2008, 35mm, 144m
English, French, and Korean with English subtitles
A successful painter facing pot possession charges flees his sleepy Korean home for the streets of Paris in Hong’s ambling portrait of midlife male discombobulation. A run-in with an old flame, now unhappily married; a series of tearful phone calls to his wife back home; a cautious affair with a young art student; a visit to a church; brief stirrings of lust and affection and homesickness and regret—Hong captures it all with effortless grace and calm matter-of-factness, until a late-film swerve into fantasy caps the whole thing off with a mischievous question mark.
Saturday, May 7 at 6:30pm (paired with On the Beach at Night Alone)
Sunday, May 8 at 8:00pm (paired with Claire’s Camera)
Nobody’s Daughter Haewon 누구의 딸도 아닌 해원
South Korea, 2013, 90m
English and Korean with English subtitles
In Hong’s 14th feature, a chamber piece at once eloquently simple and deceptively complex, a young film student named Haewon (Jeong Eun-chae) finds herself at loose ends when her mother moves to Canada. She clings to her married lover, a filmmaker/professor (Lee Sun-kyun), and is bowled over by the insights of another professor (Kim Eui-seong) visiting from San Diego. Meanwhile, she struggles to find her own way and her own identity as we all do when we’re young: a little bit at a time, encounter by encounter, experience by experience, in reality and in dreams.
Saturday, April 16 at 3:30pm (paired with Woman on the Beach)
Friday, May 6 at 3:45pm (paired with In Front of Your Face*, at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)
Oki’s Movie 옥희의 영화
South Korea, 2010, 80m
Toggling between the present and the past, reality and fiction, this deeply felt work from Hong recounts the amorous and artistic adventures of a talented young director, his middle-aged cinema instructor, and the woman (the titular Oki) who loves them both. A pivotal film for Hong, Oki’s Movie realizes a shift in his work toward emphasizing and exploring a female point of view—a movement that culminates in the film’s fourth and final segment, in which we finally see Oki’s movie, which dramatizes her relationships with both men.
Friday, April 8 at 7:30pm (paired with In Another Country)
Friday, April 15 at 6:30pm (paired with Tale of Cinema)
On the Beach at Night Alone 밤의 해변에 혼자서
South Korea, 2017, 101m
English, German, and Korean with English subtitles
Hong’s movies have always invited autobiographical readings, and his 19th feature is perhaps his most achingly personal film, a steel-nerved, clear-eyed response to the tabloid frenzy that erupted in South Korea over his relationship with actress Kim Minhee. The film begins in Hamburg, where actress Young-hee (played by Kim herself, who won the Best Actress prize at Berlin for this role) is hiding out after the revelation of her affair with a married filmmaker. Back in Korea, a series of encounters shed light on Young-hee’s volatile state, as she slips in and out of melancholic reflection and dreams. Centered on Kim’s astonishingly layered performance, On the Beach at Night Alone is the work of a master mining new emotional depths.
Thursday, April 14 at 8:45pm (paired with Like You Know It All)
Saturday, May 7 at 9:15pm (paired with Night and Day)
On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate 생활의 발견
South Korea, 2002, 35mm, 115m
After an actor is passed over for a part, he leaves Seoul to go visit an old friend and former classmate; the friend recounts to him the legend of the Buddhist temple Turning Gate, which then, as if by magic, initiates a series of romantic dalliances. First, a young dance instructor falls head over heels for him, and then a married woman swears she knows him from somewhere. He begins to wonder if this second woman is his soulmate, but eerie coincidences and feelings of déjà vu make his choice between the two women ever more uncertain. Hong’s fourth feature is a playful and profound meditation on love, fate, and how we try to make sense of reality’s essential ambiguity.
Wednesday, May 4 at 9:00pm (paired with Tale of Cinema)
Monday, May 9 at 2:00pm (paired with Yourself and Yours)
Our Sunhi 우리 선희
South Korea, 2013, 88m
Our Sunhi offers another dryly comic and acutely observed take on misread behavior, indecision, and awkward interchanges between the sexes from one of cinema’s undisputed masters of moral comedy. Attempting to make a new start, slightly lost former film student Sunhi (Jung Yu-mi) returns to her college to get a reference letter and inadvertently awakens vague romantic longings, first in her old professor, then in a graduate student/ex-boyfriend, and finally in a film director and potential mentor from her class. The three men move into orbit around Sunhi, proffering career and life-choice advice while attempting to define and “understand” her, but in the end they are merely projecting their own feelings and interpretations onto their obscure and unwitting object of desire, to quietly comical effect.
Saturday, April 9 at 9:00pm (screening with List, paired with In Another Country)
Friday, April 15 at 1:30pm (screening with Lost in the Mountains, paired with The Woman Who Ran)
The Power of Kangwon Province 강원도의 힘
South Korea, 1998, 110m
Hong followed his acclaimed 1996 debut, The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, with this understated diptych concerning a popular retreat in Kangwon, a mountainous region near Seoul. At first, the film centers on the recently single Jisook, who joins two friends on vacation and falls into a romantic entanglement with a local policeman. Then, the focus shifts to a listless professor, Sangkwon, visiting Kangwon at the same time as Jisook. Already in his sophomore feature, Hong’s soon-to-be signatures of knotted affairs and boozy small talk unfold across a bold yet unassuming structural experiment that invites multiple viewings.
Sunday, April 10 at 1:00pm (paired with Right Now, Wrong Then)
Tuesday, April 12 at 1:00pm (paired with Hahaha)
Right Now, Wrong Then 지금은맞고그때는틀리다
South Korea, 2015, 121m
Ham Chun-su (Jung Jae-young) is an art-film director who has come to Suwon for a screening of one of his movies. He meets Yoon Hee-jung (Kim Minhee), a fledgling artist. She’s never seen any of his films but knows he’s famous; he’d like to see her paintings and then go for sushi and soju. Every word, every pause, every facial expression, and every movement is a negotiation between revelation and concealment: too far over the line for Chun-su and he’s suddenly a middle-aged man on the prowl who uses insights as tools of seduction; too far for Hee-jung and she’s suddenly acquiescing to a man who’s leaving the next day. So they walk the fine line all the way to a tough and mordantly funny end point, at which time… we begin again, but now with different emotional dynamics. Hong achieves a maximum of layered nuance with a minimum of people, places, and incidents. An NYFF53 selection.
Sunday, April 10 at 3:00pm (paired with The Power of Kangwon Province)
Wednesday, April 13 at 3:15pm (paired with Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors)
SECRET SCREENING! *비밀 시사회
All we’ll say for now is that the film will be revealed during the screening’s introduction. Just trust us on this one.
Tuesday, May 10 at 7:00pm
Tale of Cinema 극장전
South Korea/France, 2005, 89m
A bifurcated tale of what cinema can do to those in its thrall, Hong’s sixth feature is composed of two halves: in the first, a young man encounters a woman he used to know, and after a drunken night of abortive sex, the two make a double-suicide pact; in the second, a slightly older man seemingly has an extremely similar experience, as it becomes apparent that the first half was in fact a film-within-the-film whose male lead appears to be based upon him. A key work in the first phase of Hong’s career, Tale of Cinema is something like a Rosetta Stone for his subsequent twice-told tales.
Friday, April 15 at 8:00pm (paired with Oki’s Movie)
Wednesday, May 4 at 6:30pm (paired with On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate; Q&A with Hong Sangsoo)
Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors 오! 수정
South Korea, 2000, 126m
An early experiment in bifurcation and repetition, Hong’s third feature anticipates much of his later work while also enduring as one of his most visually ambitious and formally audacious films. A filmmaker (Moon Seung-kun) introduces his friend, a well-to-do gallerist (Jeong Bo-seok), to another friend, a television writer (the late, great Lee Eun-ju), unwittingly setting the stage for the type of psychodramatic love triangle that’s squarely within director Hong’s wheelhouse. But then, just as the story seems to end, it begins all over again, with new details foregrounded, others changed or removed… In short, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors is a consummately Hongian investigation into the vagaries of the heart.
Tuesday, April 12 at 6:30pm (paired with Like You Know It All)
Wednesday, April 13 at 1:00pm (paired with Right Now, Wrong Then)
Woman Is the Future of Man 여자는 남자의 미래다
South Korea/France, 2004, 88m
An attempted trip down memory lane turns sour in this volatile melodrama, a key work in the development of Hong’s approach to examining relations between men and women. Two friends (Kim Tae-woo and Yoo Ji-tae), a filmmaker and an art teacher respectively, drunkenly decide to seek out an old girlfriend in a nearby city, but this journey into the past reopens old wounds and reignites old longings that were probably best left extinguished. An eminently modern parable about love and selfishness, Woman Is the Future of Man endures as one of Hong’s richest group portraits of everyday people flailing about while trying to obtain a bit of tenderness.
Sunday, April 17 at 6:00pm (paired with Woman on the Beach)
Thursday, May 5 at 8:45pm (paired with The Woman Who Ran)
Woman on the Beach 해변의 여인
South Korea, 2006, 127m
After creatively blocked filmmaker Jung-rae (Kim Seung-woo) convinces his friend to join him on a brief holiday to finish a script, he begins an affair with the friend’s girlfriend, Mun-suk (Go Hyun-jung). As is customary in Hong’s doubled-narrative structures, the film’s second half inverts this triangle when Jung-rae returns to the beach and meets Sun-hee (Song Seon-mi), a woman who resembles Mun-suk. Woman on the Beach revisits the kind of listless coastal resort town that supplied the setting for The Power of Kangwon Province, but this time during its wintry off-season, as Hong deftly captures the subtle layers of monotony, humor, and sadness that connect Jung-rae’s two trips. An NYFF44 selection.
Saturday, April 16 at 1:00pm (paired with Nobody’s Daughter Haewon)
Sunday, April 17 at 7:45pm (paired with Woman Is the Future of Man)
The Woman Who Ran 도망친 여자
South Korea, 2020, 77m
Men are mostly, amusingly sidelined in The Woman Who Ran, which is anchored by the director’s regular collaborator—and real-life partner—Kim Minhee as the peripatetic Gamhee. Divided into three casually threaded yet distinct sections, the film follows Gamhee as she travels without her husband for the first time in years, visiting a succession of friends: two on purpose, one by chance. As usual, Hong allows the most minimal interactions to carry surprising weight, and uses subtle and sly narrative repetition to evoke a world of circular motion. The Woman Who Ran also features one of Hong’s most expert comic set pieces, a neighborly argument about stray cats that gets to the heart of the filmmaker’s lovingly crafted world of thwarted connections and everyday dysfunction. An NYFF58 selection.
Friday, April 15 at 3:45pm (paired with Our Sunhi/Lost in the Mountains)
Thursday, May 5 at 6:30pm (paired with Woman Is the Future of Man; Q&A with Hong Sangsoo)
Yourself and Yours 당신 자신과 당신의 것
South Korea, 2016, 86m
For his 18th feature, Hong boldly and wittily continues his ongoing exploration of the painful caprices of modern romance. Painter Young-soo (Kim Joo-hyuk) hears secondhand that his girlfriend, Min-jung (Lee Yoo-young), has recently had (many) drinks with an unknown man. This leads to a quarrel that seems to end their relationship. The next day, Young-soo sets out in search of Min-jung, while she—or a woman who looks exactly like her and may or may not be her twin—has a series of encounters with strange men, some of whom claim to have met her before… Yourself and Yours is a break-up/make-up comedy unlike any other, suffused with sophisticated modernist mystery. An NYFF54 selection.
Monday, April 11 at 8:00pm (paired with The Day He Arrives)
Monday, May 9 at 4:15pm (paired with On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate)
Free Talks
Film at Lincoln Center Talk: Hong Sangsoo
Join Film at Lincoln Center’s Director of Programming (and author of the soon-to-be published monograph Tale of Cinema, available from Fireflies Press during the second half of the retrospective (May 4-10) and then released in bookstores worldwide in August) Dennis Lim and director Hong Sangsoo for an expansive discussion covering the entirety of Hong’s singular career to date and his richly intricate and always surprising filmography.
Saturday, May 7 at 5:00pm in the Walter Reade Theater
Film Comment Live: The Hong Show with Dennis Lim
Everything you always wanted to know about Hong Sangsoo… but were afraid to ask! To celebrate the commencement of Film at Lincoln Center’s two-part retrospective of the films of Hong Sangsoo, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish will host a special conversation with Film at Lincoln Center Director of Programming Dennis Lim about the playful, profound, and soju-soaked filmography of one of world cinema’s most influential and ingenious artists. Lim, the author of a forthcoming monograph on Hong’s Tale of Cinema from Fireflies Press, will have his expertise put to the test with a series of preselected questions from Film Comment contributors about the South Korean auteur’s elliptical, endlessly generative oeuvre. In keeping with the spirit of the films, drinks will be served before and during the conversation.
Friday, April 8 at 6pm in the Amphitheater
홍상수 감독 영화의 술 장면. 사진 왼쪽부터 오른쪽으로.
돼지가 우물에 빠진 날(1996)/ 강원도의 힘(98)/ 오! 수정(2000)/ 생활의 발견(02)/ 여자는 남자의 미래다(04)/
극장전(05)/ 해변의 여인(06)/ 밤과 낮(08)/ 잘 알지도 못하면서(09)/ 하하하(10)/
옥희의 영화(10)/ 북촌방향(11)/ 우리 선희(13)/ 자유의 언덕(14)/ 지금은맞고그때는틀리다(15)/
당신 자신과 당신의 것(16)/밤의 해변에서 혼자(16)/ 그후(17)/ 강변호텔(18)/ 도망친 여자(20)
한류를 이해하는 33가지 코드 #4 음주가무(飮酒歌舞)-마시고/DRINK, 술술술
33 Keys to Decoding the Korean Wave, Hallyu! #4 DRINK,
http://www.nyculturebeat.com/?mid=Focus&document_srl=4055212
SCHEDULE OF RETROSPECTIVE BY DATE
Part I (April 8-17)
Friday, April 8
6:00pm Film Comment Live: The Hong Show with Dennis Lim in the Amphitheater
7:30pm Oki’s Movie + 9:00pm In Another Country
Saturday, April 9
3:00pm The Day He Arrives + 4:45pm The Day After
7:15pm In Another Country + 9:00pm Our Sunhi + List
Sunday, April 10
1:00 The Power of Kangwon Province + 3:00 Right Now, Wrong Then
6:00 Hahaha + 8:15 Introduction
Monday, April 11
6:30pm The Day He Arrives + 8:00pm Yourself and Yours
Tuesday, April 12
1:00pm The Power of Kangwon Province + 3:00pm Hahaha
6:30pm Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors + 8:45pm Like You Know It All
Wednesday, April 13
1:00pm Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors + 3:15pm Right Now, Wrong Then
Thursday, April 14
1:00pm Hotel by the River + 2:45pm Introduction
6:30pm Like You Know It All + 8:45pm On the Beach at Night Alone
Friday, April 15
1:30pm Our Sunhi + Lost in the Mountains + 3:45pm The Woman Who Ran
6:30pm Oki’s Movie + 8:00pm Tale of Cinema
Saturday, April 16
1:00pm Woman on the Beach + 3:30pm Nobody’s Daughter Haewon
6:30pm Hill of Freedom + 8:00pm The Day After
Sunday, April 17
1:30pm Claire’s Camera + Lost in the Mountains + 3:30pm Hotel by the River
6:00pm Woman is the Future of Man + 7:45pm Woman on the Beach
PART II (May 4-10)
Wednesday, May 4
6:30pm The Tale of Cinema + 9:00pm On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate
*A Q&A with Hong will take place between the two screenings
Thursday, May 5
2:00pm The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well + 4:15pm Grass
6:30pm The Woman Who Ran + 8:45pm Woman is the Future of Man
*A Q&A with Hong will take place between the screenings of The Woman Who Ran and Woman is the Future of Man
Friday, May 6
*IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE OPENS
3:45pm Nobody’s Daughter Haewon
*Free entry for In Front of Your Face opening weekend ticket holders
*A Q&A will follow the first evening screening of In Front of Your Face
6:30pm Hill of Freedom + List + 8:15pm Grass
Saturday, May 7
5:00pm Free Talk with Hong Sangsoo
6:30pm Night and Day + 9:15pm On the Beach at Night Alone
*An introduction will precede the first evening screening of In Front of Your Face
Sunday, May 8
3:30pm The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well
*Free entry for In Front of Your Face opening weekend ticket holders
6:30pm Claire’s Camera + 8:00pm Night and Day
Monday, May 9
2:00pm On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate + 4:15pm Yourself and Yours
Tuesday, May 10
7:00pm SECRET SCREENING
*Title of film to be revealed during introduction
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
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2019년 뉴욕영화제 NYFF57
홍상수 영화 연보/ Hong Sangsoo Filmography
The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (돼지가 우물에 빠진 날, 1996)
The Power of Kangwon Province (강원도의 힘, 1998)
Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (오! 수정, 2000)
On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (생활의 발견, 2002)
Woman Is the Future of Man (여자는 남자의 미래다, 2004)
Tale of Cinema (극장전, 2005)
Woman on the Beach (해변의 여인, 2006)
Night and Day (밤과 낮, 2008)
Like You Know It All (잘 알지도 못하면서, 2009)
Jeonju Digital Project "Visitors": Lost in the Mountains (어떤 방문: 첩첩산중) (short film, 2009)
Hahaha (하하하, 2010)
Oki's Movie (옥희의 영화, 2010)
The Day He Arrives (북촌방향, 2011)
List (리스트) (short film, 2011)
In Another Country (다른 나라에서, 2012)
Nobody's Daughter Haewon (누구의 딸도 아닌 해원, 2013)
Our Sunhi (우리 선희, 2013)
"Hong Sang-soo": Venice 70: Future Reloaded (홍상수 베니스 70: 미래 리로디드) (short film, 2013)
Hill of Freedom (자유의 언덕, 2014)
Right Now, Wrong Then (지금은맞고그때는틀리다, 2015)
Yourself and Yours (당신 자신과 당신의 것, 2016)
On the Beach at Night Alone (밤의 해변에 혼자서, 2017)
Clair's Camera (클레어의 카메라, 2017)
The Day After (그후, 2017)
Grass (풀잎들, 2018)
Hotel by the River (강변 호텔, 2018)
The Woman Who Ran (도망친 여자, 2020)
Introduction (인트로덕션, 2021)
In Front of Your Face (당신 얼굴 앞에서, 2021)
The Novelist's Film (소설가의 영화, 2022)
*홍상수 영화는 왜 나를 슬프게 하나: 지금은맞고그때는틀리다
-데니스 림, 홍상수 감독론 '극장전(Tale of Cinema)' 출간
*홍상수 감독 인터뷰, An Interview with Hong Sangsoo, 2004