The Korean Film Council has announced the list of fellows and mentors for the second KOFIC Filmmakers Development Lab, along with a new $40,000 award.

Aimed at emerging filmmakers worldwide of Korean descent, the Lab selects five candidates, who have submitted scripts, to be fellows. They are then paired off with mentors from the industry in Korea and the US for a week-long workshop in Hawaii.

The fellows and their projects are then presented at the Independent Feature Film Market in New York and at the Pusan International Film Festival. KOFIC will also give a new $40,000 award to the most meritorious project later this year.

KOFIC funds the Lab, which is held in partnership with the University of Hawaii, the IFP in New York, and Centre for Asian American Media (CAAM) in San Francisco.

KOFIC chairperson An Cheong Sook announced the new fellows and mentors at the opening of KOFIC's first overseas office in LA on Friday (June 29).

The five fellows for the Lab 2007 are:

* Nathan Adolfson - with the project Model American - Adolfson graduated from UCLA with awards including the Directors' Guild of America Award for his personal diary documentary Passing Through, which also screened at Cannes and aired on PBS.

* Christina Choe - with Guess Who's Coming For Kimchee' - Choe is a documentary filmmaker, video artist, TV editor and screenwriter based in LA. Her short films Tumeric Border Marks and United Nations Of Hip Hop have screened at festivals including AFI, Seattle and Palm Springs.

* Jehyun Choi - with Grand Island - is a graduate of MIT and UCLA currently working at Vertigo Entertainment in LA where she is co-producer of the Note To Self comedy project.

* Samuel Kiehoon Lee - with The Pleonsastic - is based in Ontario, Canada and graduated in film studies from Queen's University. Lee's work, including indie feature Mute and short documentary How To Make Kimchi: According To My Kun-Umma, screened at film festivals in North America and Europe.

* Gene Rhee - with The Outsider - Rhee graduated top of his MFA class from USC Film School with the Cinema Circulus Scholarship Award. He has worked at 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures and as screenwriter has projects at DreamWorks SKG and Maverick Films among others.

The mentors for the Lab this year are:

Jonathan H. Kim, Korean producer

Barry Sabath, senior lecturer at the American Film Institute

Joo-ick Lee, Korean producer

Peggy Rajski, US producer

Brant Rose, US talent agent

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