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| BAKHA SATANG | |||
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South Korea - Japan 1999 / 35 mm / Color / 129 min. | |||
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Springtime, by a river, under a railroad bridge. A 20th anniversary reunion of factory workers is disrupted by the sudden appearance of the long-lost Yongho. As his friends stand by helplessly, he climbs up onto the bridge and throws himself into the path of an oncoming train, crying, I'm going back! So does the film. We hop onto the train of time and travel back into Yongho's life. Days earlier, Yongho loses his home and family and spends his last few bills on a gun. A strange man appears at the shack where he has lived since he lost his job and takes him to the deathbed of the woman who was his childhood sweetheart. Peppermint candy provides one last magic moment. The train continues to travel back in time to reveal the secret of the peppermint candy and of Yongho's buried past, a past intertwined with Korean history: soldier, torturer, factory worker. A man at the crossroads of love. A man with blood on his hands. And then, twenty years earlier, the most innocent moment of a man's life... A startling meditation on modern Korean history through the eyes of one man who is, in turn a soldier, a cop and a businessman. -- Geoff Gardner (Senses of Cinema) A potent mixture of history and philosophy... (the film) is less a treatise on the repressive nature of Korea's postwar government than a powerful and poignant character study. -- Richard James Havis (Hollywood Reporter) |
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| Script: Lee Chang-dong. Phot.: Kim Hyung-gu. Ed.: Kim Hyun. Mus.: Lee Jae-jin. Cast: Sol Kyung-gu, Moon So-ri, Kim Yeo-jin. Prod.: Myung Kaynam, East Film, 1501 Seoul Visual Venture Centre, 1340-6 Seocho-2dong, Seocho-gu, S�oul (Cor�e du Sud), t�l.: (82-2) 3415 11 11, fax: (82-2) 3415 11 00, e-mail: eastfilm@netsgo,com / NHK Enterprises 21, Inc., 4-14 Kamiyama-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-004n (Japon), t�l.: (81-3) 3481 7740, fax: (81-3) 3481 49 65. Sales: Cine Click Asia, Suckcheon Bldg., B1, 10-38 Yangjaedong, Seochogu, S�oul 137-130 (Cor�e du Sud), t�l.: (82-2) 577 66 94, fax: (82-2) 578 66 93, e-mail: [email protected]. | |||
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Lee Chang-dong Born in Taegu, South Korea in 1954, Lee Chang-dong graduated in literature from Kyungpuk University in 1980 and began his career as a writer, first of novels -- he published The Booty in 1983 and followed that with two others -- then of screenplays, for Park Kwang-soo's TO THE STARRY ISLAND (1993) and A SINGLE SPARK (1995). He made his directorial debut in 1997 with GREEN FISH. |