Toronto Korean Film Festival Fundraiser Party

TKFF is back!!! You can help support this awesome festival by attending their upcoming fundraiser party on May 8th.

The party will be held at Six Degrees and starts at 9pm. Advanced tickets are $10. Tickets at the door are $15. For more info and to purchase advanced tickets click here. There is a limited VIP sofa booth with bottle package on offer too,for more info contact TKFF at tkff.info@gmail.com.

Review: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance at TKFF

Perhaps it's easy to compare director Park Chan-wook to Quentin Tarantino but this would be a mistake for several reasons. Park Chan-wook's film are known for their depictions of ultra -violence but they are done in such a poetic way that you almost forget that what you are watching is abhorrent. Ultimately the violence is part of the story and everything flows as one. Quentin Tarantino is a director but Park Chan-wook is an artist. The opening credits for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance are really beautiful (video clip above). It's little details like this that make a film truly memorable for me. It's not essential to have beautiful opening credits which makes having them really special. 

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, stars Lee Young-ae as Geum-ja, a beautiful young woman who is imprisoned at the age of nineteen for abducting and murdering a five year old boy. It is obvious from the beginning that Geum-ja has been framed for this crime. However, flashbacks to her arrest show her vigorously professing her guilt. The film begins with her release from prison as she sets out to enact a revenge plot that she has been planning for thirteen years. She begins by visiting each of her old cell mates and as she does so each of these women has their own flashback about Geum-ja's prison days. I enjoyed these flashbacks as I felt each once showed a different facet of the complex Geum-ja. In prsion Geum-ja has two nicknames, "Kind-hearted Geum-ja" and "The Witch". This may seem contradictory but essentially there are two side to Geum-ja and these two sides are split even further still. She is a complex woman, one that would give a kidney to her cell-mate like she was lending her a pair of shoes but also someone that has no qualms about killing.

Choi Min-sik is excellent as the bad guy, Mr. Baek. It's difficult to imagine how much more you could hate a child killer but Choi Min-sik manages to add that je ne sais quoi to make Mr. Baek especially detestable.

Although this is obviously meant to be quite a dark film, there were wonderful elements of whimsy that added a fairy-tale quality (not unlike the style of Jean Pierre Jeunet). These included Geum-ja's clothes (very Ann Sui), the use of narration, Geum-ja's amazing cakes and nearly every scene with Geum-ja's precocious daughter. 

 Italian poster artwork for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Korean poster artwork for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Review: Secret Sunshine

The opening film for the Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012, Secret Sunshine (Director Lee Chang-dong), tells the story of a mother persevering despite the death of her husband in a car accident. Shin-ae is upbeat and trying to make a fresh start for her and her young son by moving to her husband's hometown, Miryang (meaning Secret Sunshine in Chinese). However, despite her best efforts things do not go according to plan and tragedy strikes yet again. The film charts what is essentially her nervous breakdown as she deals with a grief so powerful that it pushes her to the edge of sanity. Standing by throughout it all however, is the adoring mechanic and Shin-ae's only real friend in Miryang, Jong-chan. Nothing that Shin-ae dishes out is too much for  Jong-chan and he even starts attending an evangelical church when she does, just so that he can be near her. The end of the film does not make any definitive statements about Shin-ae's condition but it is implied that while she will always bear the scars of the traumas that she has been through she has somehow found an inner strength and will go on. In the last scene when she cuts her hair in her backyard, Jong-chan stands in front of her holding up a mirror. We know that he will always be there for her even if it is just to do something simple.

Jeon Do -yeon puts a tremendous amount of emotional and physical energy into her performance as Shin-ae. It is at times difficult to watch because it feels as though you are watching someone that you know going through a breakdown. Song Kang -ho gives a humorous and touching performance as Jong-chan who is regarded as a loser even by his own mother but is actually the most decent person in Shin-ae's life. 

Toronto Korean Film Festival

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the press conference for the first annual Toronto Korean Film Festival (June 22nd -July 1st 2012).

I was fed continuously, delicious beef bulgogi straight from a sizzling pan, bibimbap, glass noodles, various kimchis (radish being my current fav) and a refreshing rice soft drink. I thought that Italians had an unrestrained love of feeding others but it appears that the Koreans have eclipsed them at this (I speak as an Italian-Canadian). Anyone who wants to feed me delicious food has won me as a forever friend. I probably should have taken more photographs of the food as it was beautifully presented but I was too busy gobbling it up.

I was excited to learn of the film line-up which includes one of my favourite films, A Tale of Two Sisters. I am also looking forward to seeing Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring, Mother, Leafie, a Hen into the Wild, Old Boy, Failan, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance at the festival.

After the press conference we were treated to a screening of PBS's cookery show The Kimchi Chronicles and of course we were fed again on the way out!

On June 1st there will be a free screening of The Host in Christie Pitts park as part of the 20th Korean DANO spring Festival. TKFF will have a booth for the festival (June 1st-2nd) where advanced tickets and passes to the film festival can be purchased.

Kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi)

It was nice to see Hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) modelled:

 Jeogori (short jacket) and Chima (long skirt)

 Dangui (over garment) and Seuran chima (long skirt)

Beautiful and elebaorate traditional hairstyles accented by bi'nyeo (long ornamental hair pins securing buns)and tteoljam (hair ornaments)

 Sadly, most Torontonians know very little. It seems odd since we have an awesome Korea Town:


This lady was at least familiar with bibimbap.

 This man is a big fan of Korean barbeque but strangely has never had kimchi (what???).

 This man waxed lyrical about South Korea having the world's fastest internet speeds but seemed to know little else.

  Hipsters, as one very well may have suspected, know very little about Korean cinema and culture.

A bibimbap demo to show how easy and fun it is to make this delicious dish. Since bibmibap is usually comprised of cold ingredients it is an especially suitable dish for the summer months.

All photos were taken by myself, Danielle La Valle. If you would like to borrow or use them in anyway please provide a link back to this post and also email me at glowingdoll@gmail.com.