Kim, Ki-young
Master of MadnessThe Films of Korea's B-Movie Genius The Film Society presents the first North American retrospective of the works of the late Korean B-movie master, Kim Ki-Young, June 12-14 at San Francisco's Castro Theatre. At a recent retrospective at the Pusan Inte rnational Film Festival in Korea, Kim's deliciously twisted creations elicited comparisons to the work of everyone from Shohei Imamura to Sam Fuller, Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Sirk, Nicholas Ray and Roger Corman. Kim, who attended the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1960 with his film Unheeded Cries ( Resistance of Teenagers), died earlier this year at the age of 78 while in the planning stages for his first feature in over a decade, Diabolical Woman. His psychically fraught, bizarre treasures are unlike anything you've seen. This special series is presented in association with the Film Center of Chicago through the generosity and support of the Korean Film Archive and the Consul General of Korea. Iodo (1977)
A tourist-hotel promoter's search for a missing journalist leads him to a mysterious island populated by women. Their dark secrets and unusual traditions are at the center of this daring exploration of sexual taboos, environmental destruction, religion and death. The Housemaid (1960)
In the first of a series of similarly-plotted torrid melodramas, a popular music teacher becomes involved with a factory girl that he and his wife have hired as a maid. Manipulations and madness follow as the two women engage in a deadly power struggle . The stark black-and-white photography, haunting sound effects and Kim's expressionist set designs amplify the lurid plot twists. Insect Woman (1972)
A man with no ability to support his family becomes involved with a bar waitress in this highly stylized soap-opera thriller. His wife's surprising reaction to the affair leads to torment and raticide! Framed as a story told in an institution where men have suffered breakdowns as a result of their psychological masculation by wives and lovers, the film features some of Kim's most diabolical women and bizarre sexual encounters. Promise of the Flesh (1975)
A lurid remake of a Korean cinematic masterpiece, Autumn. In the claustrophobic confines of a train compartment, a female prisoner, Sook Young, accompanied on furlough by a prison guard, falls in love with a mysterious fellow passenger. Mutual passion leads to hope for a future together, but fate intervenes. Killer Butterfly (1978)
Kim's absurdist imagination and phantasmagoric vision are evident in this film in three episodes that follow a young student through unimaginable circumstances: a run-in with an adversary who refuses to die, a sexual encounter with a reincarnated woman with deadly needs and an apprenticeship to an eccentric archaeologist. Grotesque images and radical sexuality rule the screen. Woman of Fire '82 (1982)
Expressive color photography distinguishes this variation on The Housemaid in which a composer and his chicken-farmer wife are drawn into psychological and sexual turmoil with the arrival of a young country girl hired as a maid. Features Kim's trademar k highly eroticized situations, stripped of the restraints of civilization. From the 41st San Francisco International Film Festival |
