A Lifetime of Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho

 

Mar 23–May 29, 2026

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles

 

 

LA의 영화아카데미뮤지엄(Academy Museum of Motion Pictures)이 3월 23일부터 5월 29일까지 봉준호(Bong Joon Ho) 감독에게 평생 영감을 준 영화들을 상영하는 'A Lifetime of Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho'를 연다. 

 

'기생충(Parasite, 2019)'의 거장 봉준호는 어린 시절 TV를 보면서 영화에서 매료되기 시작했다. 한국 방송과 주한미군방송(American Forces Korea Network, 채널 2)을 통해 방영되는 외국 영화들을 보며 영화에 대한 애정을 키웠다. 

 

그는 "TV는 내게 영화관과 같았다"라고 카탈로그에서 밝혔다. TV를 통해 미 장르 영화, 김기영, 이마무라 쇼헤이같은 동아시아 거장들의 영화를 꾸준히 접할 수 있었다. 1988년 연세대에서 사회학을 전공하던 봉 감독은 영화 클럽 '노란문 영화연구소'를 설립했다. 이 클럽은 단순히 영화를 보는데 그치지 않았다. 워크숍을 열고, 영화도 만들었다. TV와 연세대 시절이 자신의 영화적 취향을 형성하고, 영화 제작에도 영감을 주게 된다. 

 

'A Lifetime of Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho'에선 욕망, 집착, 그리고 자아에 의한 복수를 탐구한 김기영 감독의 '하녀'를 비롯, 봉 감독이 50번도 넘게 보았다는 알프레드 히치콕의 '사이코', 루키노 비스콘티 감독, 알랭 들롱 주연의'로코와 그의 형제들', 해롤드 핀터 원작, 조셉 로지 감독, 더크 보가트 주연의 '하인', 존 슐레징거 감독, 더스틴 호프만과 로렌스 올리비에 주연의 '마라톤 맨', 칸영화제와 베를린 영화제 대상을 수상한 앙리 조르쥬 클루조 감독의 '공포의 보수',  코헨 형제의 '바튼 핑크', 구로사와 기요시의 '큐어'가 상영된다. 

https://www.academymuseum.org/programs/series/a-lifetime-of-inspiration-bong-joon-ho

 

한편, 봉 감독은 2012년 영국의 영화 전문지 '사이트 앤 사운드(Sight and Sound)'에 자신의 세계 영화사상 걸작 톱 10을 공개했다. 

 

-비정성시 City of Sadness, A 1989 Hsiao-hsien Hou

-큐어 Cure 1998 Kurosawa Kiyoshi

-파고 Fargo 1995 Joel & Ethan Coen

-하녀 Housemaid, The 1960 Kim Ki-young

-사이코 Psycho 1960 Alfred Hitchcock

-성난 황소 Raging Bull 1980 Martin Scorsese

-악의 손길 Touch of Evil 1958 Orson Welles

-복수는 나의 것 Vengeance is Mine 1979 Imamura Shohei

-공포의 보수 Wages of Fear, The 1953 Henri-Georges Clouzot

-조디악 Zodiac 2007 David Fincher

 

*세계 영화사상 걸작 Top 100 ...홍상수, 봉준호, 코폴라, 알렌, 타란티노 Top 10

 

 

 

A Lifetime of Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho

 

Drawing from an array of posters featured in the exhibition Director's Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho, this series gathers classic films that continue to influence Bong’s filmmaking sensibilities.

 

Mar 23–May 29, 2026

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles

 

Filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s love for cinema began on a small television set in his childhood bedroom, where he watched international films broadcast on Korean public television and the American Forces Korea Network, a channel for US troops stationed in South Korea.

 

“TV was my cinematheque,” he says in the catalog for the Academy Museum exhibition Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho—a medium that allowed him to consume a steady diet of American genre pictures and films from East Asian auteurs such as Kim Ki-young and Shohei Imamura. In 1988, Bong pursued a degree in sociology at Yonsei University in Seoul, where he helped establish the film club Yellow Door, where “we didn’t just watch movies, we held workshops and made movies ourselves.” Bong credits both television and his time at Yonsei for developing his taste and inspiring him to make his own films. Drawing from an array of posters featured in our exhibition, this series gathers classic films that continue to influence Bong’s filmmaking sensibilities.

 

Museum visitors who purchase a general admission ticket are welcome to join us for same-day screenings in this film series during their visit, free of charge. Screenings in this series are also free to Academy Museum members.

 

 

Programmed by Hyesung ii and K.J. Relth-Miller.

 

 

Screenings

 

The Housemaid

Radical and uncompromising, Kim Ki-young’s Housemaid trilogy starts in 1960 with a first chapter that continues to influence new generations of filmmakers more than 60 years later. A deep survey on desire, obsession, and ego-driven revenge, this domestic horror film follows a bourgeois family who hires Myung-sook (Lee Eun-shim), an unsophisticated young woman, as their housemaid. When she becomes smitten with patriarch Dong-sik Kim, a series of strange episodes unfold, and Myung-sook’s catastrophic infatuation threatens the family bond. Kim’s unconventional language of cinema depicts a bleak reality that is borderline ludicrous, in an unconventional blend of genres that redefined filmmaking in Korea.

Fri, Apr 10, 2026 | 2:30pm | DCP, Ted Mann Theater

 

 

Psycho

“When I was a kid,” director Bong Joon Ho writes in the catalog for his current exhibition at the Academy Museum, “I watched so many Alfred Hitchcock movies on Korean television. Hitchcock is still one of my biggest inspirations. I’ve seen Psycho more than 50 times.” This psychological thriller opens with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) absconding with $40,000 cash from her employer in Phoenix to deliver to her debt-ridden fiancé in California. Along the way she stops at the Bates Motel, where an encounter with curious innkeeper Norman (Anthony Perkins) begets one of the most harrowing and famous scenes in cinema history. An Italian poster from Bong’s personal collection hangs in the exhibition, on view on Level 2, and he included... the title on his 2022 Sight & Sound list as one of 10 films that he considers the greatest of all time.

Wed, Apr 1, 2026 | 2:30pm PT, Ted Mann Theater

 

 

Rocco and His Brothers in 4K

Rocco and His Brothers was a later discovery for Bong Joon Ho, who put the film on his 2022 Sight and Sound list as one of the 10 films he considers the greatest of all time. An epic melodrama from director Luchino Visconti, the film helped to make an international star of French actor Alain Delon, cast as one of five sons of a poor rural Italian family whose fortunes fall even further after a move to Milan. The screenplay was a collaboration between Visconti and four other writers, including Suso Cecchi D’Amico—one of the first female screenwriters in Italian cinema and a key figure in the neorealist movement; her body of work includes such classics as Bicycle Thieves (1948).

Mon, Apr 13, 2026 | 2:30pm | 4K DCP, Ted Mann Theater

 

 

The Servant in 4K

Director Joseph Losey’s first of three collaborations with writer Harold Pinter was this adaptation of Robin Maugham’s 1948 novella. Focusing on social class and interpersonal relationships, the story follows Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) who is hired as manservant when the wealthy Tony (James Fox) moves into a new house. The two form a bond, but Tony is unaware of Barrett’s ulterior motive to gain the upper hand in their relationship. To further his goals, Barrett convinces Tony to hire a maid and brings his lover (Sara Miles) into the home under the guise that they are siblings.

Mon, Apr 20, 2026 | 2:30pm | 4K DCP, Ted Mann Theater

 

Marathon Man in 4K

Novelist and screenwriter William Goldman adapted the screenplay for this suspenseful thriller from his own nail-biting novel. Dustin Hoffman stars as “Babe” Levy, a New York graduate student unexpectedly thrust into a plot of government intrigue involving Nazi war criminals because of his brother’s (Roy Scheider) secret identity as a government agent. Laurence Olivier costars as the iconic villain Dr. Szell in an Oscar-nominated role that was referenced in popular culture for many years and included on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… series lists for both villains and quotes.

Mon, Apr 27, 2026 | 2:30pm | 4K DCP, Ted Mann Theater

 

The Wages of Fear in 4K

Writer-director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, 1955) adapted Georges Arnaud’s 1950 novel for this intense thriller, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Yves Montand plays Mario, a playboy stuck in a remote South American town. Down on his luck, he joins three other desperate men in a death-defying task: driving two trucks loaded with nitroglycerine over treacherous mountain roads to put out an oil well fire. Bong Joon Ho told an interviewer in 2020 that this was one of two films he saw when he was nine that inspired him to become a film director; the other was Psycho (1960). William Friedkin remade the story in English in 1977 as Sorcerer.

Mon, May 11, 2026 | 2:30pm | 4K DCP, Ted Mann Theater

 

Barton Fink in 35mm

“I’ve always been drawn to the Coen Brothers,” Bong Joon Ho says in the catalog for the exhibition Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho. “Their movies are full of misunderstandings and misinterpretations.” Set in 1941, Barton Fink is the story of the titular East Coast transplant (played by John Turturro) who abandons his playwrighting career to try his hand in Hollywood. During a bout of writer’s block in his dilapidated hotel, Fink becomes acquainted with his noisy neighbor (John Goodman), an insurance salesman whose affable appearance belies his true nature. The fourth feature by the Coens was also the first to win all three major prizes—Best Director, Best Actor, and the Palme d’Or—at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was nominated at the 64th Academy Awards for Supporting Actor (Michael Lerner), Art Direction, and Costume Design.  

Mon, May 18, 2026 | 2:30pm | 35mm, Ted Mann Theater

 

Cure in 4K

This brooding psychological crime thriller introduced writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to an international audience and was an influence on the wave of Japanese horror films that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Koji Yakusho stars as Takabe, a Tokyo detective assigned to a string of violent murders carried out by people with seemingly no motive. While struggling to cope with his wife’s schizophrenia, Takabe find his investigation leading him to the enigmatic Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), a former psychology student dealing with amnesia. Kurosawa uses thriller and horror elements to create an exploration of the existential that is fraught with tension.

Mon, May 25, 2026 | 2:30pm | 4K DCP, Ted Mann Theater

https://www.academymuseum.org/programs/series/a-lifetime-of-inspiration-bong-joon-ho