The selection of Chunhyang by the Korean filmmaker Im Kwont'aek for the 2000 Cannes Festival cuts markedly the international consecration of the New Korean Cinema. Choosing this film is a significant symbol: A Korean version of Romeo and Juliet, this traditional film was used as a scenario for the first talking film in 1935, which has been continuously readapted ever since.

As a flashing melodrama shot in the past with appropriate costumes and settings, the film perpetuates the aesthetism of a leading genre, at the same time it reflects the exceptional soaring of the cinema industry in Korea. Chunhyang has benefited from the largest budget ever spent on a film in Korea, that is about 4 million dollars. Only such an amount of money could make it possible to get the necessary settings, costumes and work in natural lighting.

Im Kwont'aek has been able to benefit from all this as a consequence of the fascinating rise of Korean cinema. The Korean cinema has reached a level, for the first time ever, meeting the ambitions of its filmmakers. The Korean cinema suffered at its beginnings from the imperialist Japanese occupation, which restricted the production to propaganda films. The Korean war then reduced the production studios to nothing, and many of its protagonists vanished. A few films from the civil war period, which were miraculously saved, are only being rediscovered today. In the 60's and 70's, the army who headed the governments both favoured the expansion of cinema and heavily controlled it through censorship.

From that time on, a quota system made it compulsory for the national theatres to broadcast Korean films. Producers and distributors thus had to finance a large quantity of national films in order to import a few successful films from other countries. About 20 production companies settled in Chungmuro, the part of Seoul famous for its theaters, providing the 600 national screens screening around 100 films to an audience of a hundred million a year. In 1988, a first breakthrough is to be noted: with the progressive withdrawal of the armed forces, democratization gave way to a more liberal cinema economy. The Americans succeed in getting an open market. Re-examined quotas were lowered and American films were directly distributed. Monopolistic firms in Chungmuro lost their hegemony and independant producers were able to work. This mood of liberalization and competition brought about the first Nouvelle Vague of the Korean cinema.

In the early 90's, the well-known choebols, the financial and industrial trusts, invested money in cinema, which deriving considerable profits, had become a concurrential part of the industry. Samsung, Daewoo started dealing with production and distribution, whether films or videos: They even took part in increasing the number of theaters all over the nation. Film budgets increased by 3, and action or Sci-fi films benefited from special effects and a sophisticated technological machinery. The new cabled TV channels took part in this new rejoicing for cinema. A national revival favoured Korean films at the deterrence of the American ones, accused of forcefully monopolizing the market. Illustrating this economic and national rivalry marked the defeat of the blockbuster Titanic at the box-office in favor of a Korean detective film Shiri by Kang Jae-Gyu.

After the Asian financial crisis, the choebols progressively departed from the industry but were replaced by joint-venture firms and newly specialized producers more or less related to the choebols. Backed by a policy of open culture led by the Kim Dae-Jung government, international festivals sprung up - Pusan, Chonju and Puchon - concentrating to showcasing an important part of Asian production and help Korean films to find foreign buyers. Inter-asian co-productions multiplied, more particulary in Chinese territories, and filmmakers turned down in the Hong Kong industry such as Wong Kar-Wai, could find the money and shooting stages necessary for their films in Korea. The Korean film industry is nowadays reveling in an increasing number of productions, which should soon reach 100 films a year.

Quotas make it possible to book one-third of the working days for the broadcasting of local productions. The Korean box-office is today the only one in the world which can boast 3 or 4 local productions among its first ten profitmakers. The industry derives strength from a new generation of engineers educated at universities in the numerous cinema departments as well as from a new arena of studies in the surrounding areas of Seoul. Korean cinema deserves attention because it has expanded not only quantitatively and economically but also in terms of aesthetics. As shown in Chunyang, Korean cinema cannot be separated from aesthetic realism.

The state of a nation deprived of its national legitimacy by the Japanese and American colonization accounts for the tendency to search for new representations of reality, even in fiction. The realistic melodramas have been dominant in quantity and popularity till the late 80's. The melodramas have reached their peak at a time when an intensive censorship greatly contributed to limit the themes and distinguishing characteristics of the Korean cinema. The quality of the melodrama comes from its propensity to prompt the tears of those watching. Tears were bubble gum for the audience of that time. A few filmmakers such as You Hionmok, Shin Sang-Hok, Yi tuyong and, later on, Im Kwont'aek, became masters of the genre. The improvement made by the industry in the late 80's and early 90's paved the way for a "Nouvelle Vague".

At the same time, cinema being more and more artistically respectable, intellectual artists from all areas developed an experimental cinema. The film Why Did Bodhi Darram Leave For East? by Bae Yong-Gyun is the most famous example of this new generation educated at universities who benefited from the massive outlays operated in cinema. Topics and styles diversified and improved. The growing relationships between the different countries in Asia made it possible to re-work the western styles. The genre film (horror, Sci-fi, detective story, martial arts) can be found in the Korean version of films such as Shiri by Kang Jae-Gyu, Tell Me Something by Yoon-Hyun, The Soul Guardian de Park Kwang-Chun or Ring by Kim Dong-Bin.

The "cinema d'auteur" confronted the problems met by modernity and provided a new psychologic cinema, which renews the genre with films like Virgin Stripped Bare By her Bachelors by Hong Sang-Soo (which stood out at Cannes 2000 in the selection Certain Regard); Girls' Night Out by Im Sang-Soo; Interview by Daniel H. Byun, An Affiar by E.J Young; Black Hole by Kim Kuk-Hyung or Kzoku CInema by Park Chul-Soo.

The film industry is flourishing in fiction amongst the avant-garde of today. An economic rise and aesthetic progression is nurturing Korean cinematography, which is slowly but surely being revealed to the world.

FilmFestivals.com reporter
Antoine Coppola