UCLA Film and Television Archive Presents the Diabolical Cinema of Kim Ki-Young — October 16-28, 1999; Co-Sponsored by the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles;

LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Sept. 1, 1999--

UCLA Film and Television Archive presents THE DIABOLICAL CINEMA OF KIM KI-YOUNG, Oct. 16-28, 1999.

Since his rediscovery at the Pusan International Film Festival in 1997, director Kim Ki-Young's films have been called everything from deviant to grotesque and he has emerged as an exceptional figure in South Korean cinema. The Archive will present the only five English-subtitled prints that exist of Kim Ki-Young features including KILLER BUTTERFLY (1978), THE HOUSEMAID (1960) and IODO (1977). All screenings take place at the James Bridges Theater located on the northeast corner of UCLA's campus (nearest cross streets are Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue in Westwood.)

Kim (1919-1998) had a long filmmaking career, spanning the 50's to the 80's. After an early realist period, he began to turn out horror-melodramas that dispensed with the sentimentality then favored in South Korean film. Instead of classical Korean values of balance and harmony, Kim opted for gothic excess, earning the moniker "Mr. Monster." Kim's films are a potent cinematic brew of surrealism, sexual perversity and domestic melodrama and have been called everything from deviant to "Douglas Sirk on acid" by film scholar Chris Berry.

Kim's films lob extreme zooms and bizarre plots like so many night flares illuminating the hidden recesses of the grotesque. KILLER BUTTERFLY (1978) alone offers up a veritable menagerie of weirdness, from the peculiar cast of characters to the brazenly illogical turns of the plot. THE HOUSEMAID (1960) is the first of the director's series of melodramas about middle-class families destroyed by greed and paranoia. In IODO (1977), more crisis ensues around the threat of a resort development on an ancestral, rustic society.

Yet for all their outrageousness, Kim's films manifest many aspects of South Korea's postwar reality. Their highly charged eroticism pitting male sexual fantasies against predatory women can be seen as symbolic metaphors playing out the massive social and psychological dislocations wrought by the country's rapid industrialization in the 60's and the 70's. Thus as eccentric a stylist as he was, Kim can also be regarded as a director who captured the chaotic pulse of his time. In a strange echo of the violent deaths that populate his films, Kim and his wife died in a house fire a year after his movies, most of which she financed, were rediscovered at the Pusan festival.

Tickets for the film series are available one hour before showtime at the James Bridges Theater. Admission is $6 general and $4 for students and seniors. List this number for further public information, 310/206-FILM or visit UCLA's Web site at www.cinema.ucla.edu.

Programming at the UCLA Film and Television Archive is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and other sponsors.

All films are in Korean with English subtitles. -0-

Saturday, Oct. 16, 1999 -- 7:30 P.M.
KILLER BUTTERFLY (Salinnabiul Jonun Yoza)(1978, South Korea, Woojin
Films, 35mm, 110 min.) Screenplay: Lee Mun-Woong. Cinematography:
Lee Sung-Chun. Starring: Kim Jung-Chol, Kim Man, Kim Cha-Ok.

Sunday, Oct. 17, 1999 -- 7 P.M.
THE  HOUSEMAID (Hayo)(1960, South Korea, Korea Munye Films, 35mm, 90
min.) Screenplay: Kim Ki-Young. Cinematography: Kim Tok-Chin.
Starring Lee Un-Shim, Chu Jung-Nyo, Kim Chin-Kyu

THE  INSECT WOMAN (Chungyo)(1972, South Korea, Hallip Films, 35mm, 110
min.) Screenplay: Kim Ki-Young., Kim Sung-Ok. Cinematography:
Chung Il-Song. Starring Won Nam-Gung, Yun Yo-Jung, Chon Kye-Hyon.

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999 -- 7:30 P.M.
IODO (1977, South Korea, Dong-Ah Export Co., 35mm, 110 min.) Based on
the novel by Lee Chung-Jun. Screenplay: Yu Sang. Cinematography:
Chung Il-Song. Starring Lee Hwa-Si, Kim Jong-Chol, Choi Yun-Sok.

PROMISE OF THE FLESH (Yukcheui Yaksok)(1975, South Korea, Dong-Ah
Export Co., 35mm, 95 min.) Based on a novel by Lee Man-Hee.
Screenplay: Kim Chi-Hon. Cinematography: Chung Il-Song. Starring
Kim Ji-Mi, Lee Jung-Kil, Park Jung-Ja.

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