| Bong Joon-Ho Mini Film Fest! |
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February 26-27, 2007 at IFC Center A special line-up of acclaimed South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's box-office mega-hits will include showings of Barking Dogs Never Bite and Memories of Murder, and shorts Incoherence and Sink and Rise. Bong will attend the screening of his latest film, The Host, for a Q&A afterwards.
The Films of Bong Joon-Ho Monday & Tuesday, February 26 & 27! Bong in person Tuesday, February 27 at 8:30pm with THE HOST! Bong Joon-Ho took the 2006 Cannes Film Festival by storm with his smart, terrifying new monster movie THE HOST. In anticipation of the film's release, this a mini-fest of his maximal career presents a special line-up of Bong's signature cinema -- black comedies, gritty crime dramas and horror thrillers with a comic book feel -- and Bong himself in person for the closing screening of THE HOST. All films at the IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave (Ave of the Americas), NY, NY 10014 map/directions Tickets can be purchased in-person at the box office or online.
Films:
Tuesday, February 27 at 8:30pm
2006, 35mm, color, Showbox & Magnolia Pictures, 119
min. Toxins from a U.S military base flow into Korea's Han River, causing the birth of a mutant creature which terrorizes Seoul. When it grabs a little girl, her dysfunctional family must band together to save her. The Host is like a mutant hybrid spawned from the improbable union of Little Miss Sunshine and Godzilla, for the film is a family comedy and political satire in which an unnaturally evolved tadpole just happens to loom (very) large. Bong expertly balances absurd humor against tense thrills, and domestic drama against mass mayhem, reasserting South Korea's place at the pinnacle of genre-busting cinema - and most of all he surprises at every turn in a film where, despite a realistic social milieu, almost anything seems possible.
Awards: 
Monday, February 26 at 9:15pm Director: Bong Joon-Ho Cast: Song Kang-Ho, Kim Sang-Kyung, Park Hae-Il
South Korea was rocked to its foundations when
struck by its first serial killer, who raped and murdered ten women in a small
village in Kyonggi Province between 1986 and 1991. Director
Bong Joon-Ho (Barking Dogs Never Bite)
has taken the investigation and combined it with best-of-career performances
from Song Kang-Ho (JSA, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) and Kim
Sang-Kyung (Turning Gate), to make Korea's
most highly-acclaimed film of 2003, a master work that is itself like a
memory of a dream: heartbreaking, mysterious, stunningly beautiful, and
unspeakably sad.
Awards: 
Monday, February 26 at 7:00pm Director: Bong Joon-Ho Cast: Bae Du-Na, Lee Sung-Jae
American Beauty hopped up on laughing gas, Barking
Dogs Never Bite's plot is choreographed as intricately as a triple-time
minuet. Its director says it's about corruption and innocence (and it is), but
the story plays as a wild comedy focusing on two of the greatest characters to
appear onscreen in decades: Lee Sung-Jae, a part-time lecturer who learns he'll
do anything to achieve a coveted position as a professor and Bae Doo-Na, a
female member of an apartment building's custodial staff who yearns to do
something brave. A shaggy-dog story about the mysteries of pregnancy, the
length of toilet paper, lost dogs, and good stew, this movie is a bedtime story
for urban sophisticates, scored to a be-bop soundtrack. The director's debut
feature, and one of the few independent Korean films, it gleefully mixes
razor-sharp acting, goofy physicality, black comedy, and genuine warmth. It's
the kind of movie that audiences live for, and that gives marketing departments
nightmares.
Tuesday, February 27 at 6:00pm
Sink And Rise (from Twentidentity )
Taken
from Twentidentity,
a 20-part omnibus film made by alumni of the Korean Academy of Film Arts on the occasion of the
school's 20th anniversary, Bong's contribution is Sink and Rise, a
whimsical work set alongside the Han River that can be seen as a warm up for the director's third
feature The Host.
A short black comedy that criticizes society with his Bong Joon-Ho's unique sense of humor, Incoherence was invited to international film festivals in San Diego and Hong Kong, giving Bong his first taste of artistic recognition. 
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