All articles by Darcy Paquet – Page 6
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Pressure piles up on Korean quota system
South Korea's embattled Screen Quota System is facing its gravest challenge to date after president Roh Moo-hyun and other members of the executive branch have spoken out in favour of weakening the system.In a meeting with reporters on October 30, the Chief Presidential Secretary for National Policy spoke of finding ...
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Sports marketeer bankrolls Korean car racing feature
Sports marketing firm Hyundai Sports International (HSI) has signalled its entry into the Korean film industry with G.T., a feature about racecar driving that will be targeted heavily at the international market.Short for "Grand Touring", G.T. features a high budget by local standards at $4.4m and is described as "a ...
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9-hour Chinese documentary wins Japanese festival
West Of Tracks, (pictured) an acclaimed 9-hour documentary about the decay of an industrial city in Northeast China, emerged a triumphant winner at the 2003 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan. Well-received US documentary Stevie by Steve James, director of the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams (1994), took home the ...
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Iran, Taiwan take top Pusan prizes
South Korea's Pusan International Film Festival wrapped up its 8th edition on October 10, with prizes in the New Currents section for first and second-time Asian directors going to Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng's directorial debut The Missing and Iranian director Alireza Amini's Tiny Snow Flakes. A special mention was also ...
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Maturing Pusan experiences growing pains
As South Korea's Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) passes its midpoint, the overall impression is of an event that is rapidly maturing, but still experiencing a few growing pains. Signs of the festival's burgeoning status in the Asian film industry abound. It secured a major international premiere for its opening ...
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Scandal erupts at South Korean box office
South Korean feature Untold Scandal has become the first local film ever to draw one million viewers in its opening weekend. Released on October 2, the film has attracted 1.13 million admissions ($6m) nationwide in its first four days. An adaptation of French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses which sets ...
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Green Planet dominates Pusan Critics Awards
The Pusan Film Critics Association has unveiled the winners of the 4th Pusan Film Critics Awards, with the genre-bending Save The Green Planet by Jang Jun-hwan taking Best Picture, Best Actor (Shin Ha-kyun), and Best New Director. The acclaimed debut work has previously won Best Director at the Moscow ...
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South Korea fully opens up to Japanese film
South Korea's Ministry of Culture and Tourism has announced the complete opening of the Korean market to Japanese live-action films, effective from January 1, 2004. This marks the last stage of the incremental dismantling of a ban on Japanese popular culture, that was enacted shortly after Korean independence in ...
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Korean pair crank up Cannes targeted films
Two of Korea's leading directors - Im Kwon-taek and Hong Sang-soo - start production this week on new features aimed squarely at next year's Cannes festival.Veteran director Im Kwon-taek's 99th film Haryu-Insaeng, the story of a young man who gets caught up in gang life in 1960s Korea, began shooting ...
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Kurosawa's Doppelganger to open Pusan
The Pusan International Film Festival has released the lineup for its 8th edition (October 2-10) featuring 244 films in all, with a strong focus on Asian cinema.Opening the South Korean festival will be the international premiere of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger, a philosophical thriller about a man who meets ...
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Pusan evolves into full Asian film market
The Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP), a rapidly-expanding project market held concurrent to the Pusan International Film Festival, has unveiled 28 official projects for its upcoming edition including works by Wong Kar Wai, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Murali Nair. The event will also be following up on its plan announced last ...
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New film studio launches in South Korea
Art Service, a division of South Korean major Plenus Entertainment, has unveiled Korea's latest and most technologically advanced studio complex in Paju, a city outside of Seoul located close to the North Korean border. The Art Service Studios presently consists of three sound stages and various amenities, with post- ...
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Pusan unveils New Currents jury
Romanian filmmaker Lucian Pintilie (The Oak) has been invited to serve as the chairman of the New Currents jury at the 8th Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) in South Korea. A competitive category for first and second-time Asian filmmakers, the New Currents section has in past years recognised the ...
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Korean summer box office heats up
South Korea's mid-summer season is proving to be quite competitive at the box-office, with four local pictures and two Hollywood films waging an intense competition for screens and viewers.Korean feature Singles currently sits atop the Seoul charts in its second week, having drawn 95,000 admissions over the two-day weekend on ...
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Puchon kicks off with Wonderful Days
South Korea's Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) kicked off on July 10 amid strong press coverage and increasing interest from local fans. A showy opening ceremony presided over by festival director Kim Hong-joon was followed by the world premiere of the highly anticipated local animated film Wonderful Days. ...
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Korea's Taewon and Cinema Service may end partnership
South Korean import/production company Taewon Entertainment has announced that it is transferring local distribution rights for Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King from Cinema Service to rival distributor CJ Entertainment. The switch virtually guarantees CJ Entertainment a third smash hit for 2003, following Memories Of ...
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Korean multiplex breaks single-day ticket sales record
A 16-screen multiplex run by South Korea's Megabox Cineplex has broken a local one-day admissions record, with the venue selling a total of 31,372 tickets on Saturday June 28. Believing this to also be a new world record, the company intends to submit a formal application to the Guinness ...
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South Korea, France re-open co-production treaty talks
South Korea and France have re-entered negotiations to draw up a co-production treaty, following the signing of an informal co-operation agreement at last year's Pusan International Film Festival between the Korean Film Commission (KOFIC) and the Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC).A full co-production agreement signed on the governmental level ...
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Korean horror breaks local opening record
Local horror film A Tale Of Two Sisters has become the biggest Korean opener in history, recording 774,500 viewers ($4m) from 158 prints over the weekend.The three-day take for distributor Big Blue Film narrowly tops a record for local pictures set earlier this year by comedy My Tutor Friend, which ...
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Korean film-makers rage against quota threat
The South Korean film community has reacted strongly to statements from Korea's Ministry of Finance & Economy calling for the reduction or abolition of the nation's Screen Quota system. In a hastily-arranged press conference on June 12, a coalition of directors, actors, and producers issued a sharp rebuttal to ...