Latest news with #FirstSummer
Korea Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Heo Ga-young's 'First Summer' wins top honor at Cannes' La Cinef
KAFA graduate becomes first Korean filmmaker to win La Cinef's top prize Heo Ga-young's graduation short "First Summer" won first prize at La Cinef at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Korean film to receive the top honor, festival organizers announced Thursday. The Korean Academy of Film Arts graduate beat 15 other student films selected from nearly 2,700 entries worldwide. Her 15-minute work pairs veteran actor Heo Jin with Jung In-ki in a story about an older woman charting new territory after years devoted to her family. Jury president Maren Ade presented the 15,000 euro ($17,000) first prize during Thursday's ceremony at Bunuel Theatre in Cannes. Beijing Film Academy's Qu Zhizheng took second for "12 Moments Before the Flag-Raising Ceremony," while Japan's Miki Tanaka and Estonia's Natalia Mirzoyan shared third. The winning films screen at Paris's Cinema du Pantheon on June 6. The film marks Korea's second selection this year alongside animator Jung Yu-mi's "Glasses" in Critics' Week. No Korean feature film made it into the festival's lineup this year. La Cinef, formerly Cinefondation, serves as the festival's dedicated platform for student films. It selects 15-20 short and medium-length films annually from film schools around the world. Korean entries have appeared regularly since 2001, with several securing runner-up and third-place positions. Most recently, Hwang Hye-in's thriller "Hole" won second prize in 2023. Yoon Dae-won's "Cicada" also took second place in 2021.
Korea Herald
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Huh Ga-young's 'First Summer' heads to Cannes
KAFA grad's short film joins lineup showcasing next-generation film talent "First Summer," director Huh Ga-young's graduation film from the Korean Academy of Film Arts, has been selected for the Cinefondation section at the upcoming 78th Cannes Film Festival, the Korean Film Council said Wednesday. The short film, which pairs veteran actor Heo Jin with Jung In-ki, follows an elderly woman who begins to chart a new path for herself after having dedicated her life solely to her family. In interviews with local media, Huh described the work as a tribute to her grandmother. "First Summer" marks the second Korean work invited to this year's festival, following animator Jung Yu-mi's "Glasses," which will compete in the Critics' Week short film competition. A Korean feature film has yet to be included in the festival's lineup. Cinefondation, now known as La Cinef, was founded in 1998 as a platform to spotlight emerging filmmaking talent from film schools worldwide. The competitive section selects 15-20 short and medium-length student films annually from over 1,000 submissions. Korean films have maintained a presence in this section since 2001, when Kim Young-nam's "I Can Fly To You But You…" became the first Korean entry. The country has produced several award winners ever since. Most recently, Hwang Hye-in's thriller "Hole" claimed second prize at the 76th festival in 2023. Yoon Dae-won's "Cicada," which follows a transgender sex worker during one transformative night, also claimed second prize in 2021. Several Cinefondation alumni have made their marks in Korean commercial cinema. Cho Sung-hee, whose 2009 entry "Don't Step Out of the House" earned third place, went on to direct the smash-hit romance "A Werewolf Boy" (2012) and Netflix's sci-fi blockbuster "Space Sweepers" (2019). Park Young-ju, invited in 2016, recently directed the feature "A Citizen of a Kind" (2024) starring Ra Mi-ran. The 78th Cannes Film Festival runs May 13 to May 24.
Korea Herald
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Why actor Park Jeong-min became a publisher and put audiobook first
Actor Park Jeong-min has introduced a new initiative as the head of his publishing company Muze, aiming to make literature more accessible to readers with visual impairments. The project, titled the 'Listening Novel Project,' launched with the release of Kim Keum-hee's new full-length novel "First Summer, Wanju" as an audiobook. Departing from the conventional practice of releasing print editions first, the audiobook version was completed and distributed ahead of the print release. On April 4, copies of the audiobook were donated to the National Library for the Disabled and other institutions serving visually impaired communities. It will be officially released on the audiobook platform Welaaa April 28, followed by the print edition, April 30. 'When my company's first book 'Saving Work' was published, my father had lost his eyesight,' he said explaining the motivation behind the project at a book talk held Thursday at the National Library of Korea in Seoul. 'It was disheartening that I couldn't show him the book. It led me to think about what kind of books he could still enjoy. That's how the idea of a 'listening novel' came about.' "First Summer, Wanju" follows Son Yeol-mae, a voice actor, who travels to the hometown of a once-close friend who had betrayed her. The audiobook was produced with actors participating gratis. They include Go Min-si, Yum Jung-ah, Choi Yang-rak, Kim Eui-sung, Park Joon-myeon and Ryu Hyun-kyung. Unlike standard audiobooks, the production was structured more like a radio drama, incorporating detailed sound effects and original music by singer-songwriters MRCH and Gureumy. Park added that the project is ongoing, with contracts already signed with additional authors. 'It felt like the characters I had written became clearer through their voices,' author Kim said. 'Usually, the characters spoke in 'my voice,' but this was the first time I realized how many distinct voices were in the story.' The Thursdy book talk was open to readers with visual impairments and their support aides. "In the case of movies, it's difficult to enjoy them without audio descriptions, so I've turned to books more often," said one attendee. 'This audiobook felt so special, (with the different actors and sound effects) it was like a movie to me, making visual impairments feel less like a barrier.' Park, known for his roles in "Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet," Netflix's "The 8 Show" and Coupang Play's "Newtopia," is no stranger to books. He has written a series of columns in a magazine, and published an essay collection titled "Useful Human" (2016). He also previously ran an independent bookstore before founding Muze and publishing its first book, "Saving Work," by journalist Park So-young in 2020. "If there are people who want to tell stories from overlooked places, I wanted to give them the chance to speak," Park said, explaining the reason for starting the publishing company.
Korea Herald
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Rising talents get spotlight at Korean Academy of Film Arts graduation film fest
38 works by academy graduates to be screened March 7-15 in Seoul and Busan The Korean Academy of Film Arts will host its annual Graduation Film Festival March 7-9 at Megabox Seongsu in Seoul, with an additional screening day on March 15 at the Korean Film Council's headquarters in Busan, organizers announced Tuesday. Under the slogan "Like a Movie," this year's festival will present 38 films from KAFA's latest graduates, offering audiences a first glimpse at Korea's emerging cinematic talents. The lineup includes 18 live-action short films, five short animations, seven feature-length animations, six feature-length live-action films and two demo productions from the KAFA Actors program. Notable works include "First Summer" (Korean title: "Cheotyeoreum") directed by Huh Ga-young, a live-action short film that pairs 1970s star Heo Jin with actor Jung In-ki, and the short animation "Fantasy Theater" (Korean title: "hwan-sang-geuk-jang") directed by Han Sol-mi, a tale about a historic single-screen cinema in Wonju awaiting demolition. The festival will also screen "Hana Meets Hana," directed by Kim Jung-byeon-ji, which won the best director award at the 20th San Diego International Kids' Film Festival, and "Tango at Dawn" directed by Kim Hyo-eun, a feature-length film previously invited to the 29th Busan International Film Festival's Korean Cinema Today section. Over its 41-year history, KAFA has established itself as Korea's premier film academy. Acclaimed directors who got their start in the program include Bong Joon-ho, Uhm Tae-hwa of "Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned" and "Concrete Utopia," and Jang Joon-hwan of "Save the Green Planet!," "Hwayi" and "1987." Screening times and tickets can be found on KAFA's official Instagram with options for advanced online booking and on-site purchases at the venue.
The Guardian
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride review – brilliantly rule-breaking fiction
Eimear McBride does extraordinary things with language. The subject matter of her fiction, from A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing onwards, is transgressive. In 2016's The Lesser Bohemians and in this new novel, not so much a sequel as a variation, she writes about incestuous child abuse, self-harm, suicide, heroin addiction, a miscarriage deliberately induced by rough penetrative sex, and about lots and lots of other sex between a couple whose ages (she's not yet 20, he's nearly 40) are likely to give modern readers pause. But what is most startling about McBride's work is not its dark material, but the way she breaks every rule in the grammar book and gleefully gets away with it. The City Changes Its Face has a doubled and entwined time scheme. It is the 1990s, north London, an area dirtier and poorer than it is now; we begin two years after The Lesser Bohemians left off. The lovers of that novel, Eily, the teenage drama student, and Stephen, the established actor with a traumatic past, have been living together. Something awful has happened. In the sections headed Now they are having an agonised conversation about that event. They move from pleas and accusations to a row, then to a thrown jar of piccalilli and bloodshed, followed by penitence and confessions and, at last, a reconciliation. This book-long conversation is interspersed with retrospective sections – headed First Summer, Second Winter and so on – in which we are shown, in scattered episodes, how they arrived at this point. As the two narratives converge on the awful event, its nature is gradually revealed. The event is easily guessed, but there is more to it, the final twist having as much to do with McBride's narrative form as it does with her story. It's a complex structure, skilfully controlled. About halfway through, it is interrupted by a movie. The book gives us access to Eily's interior self; not so with Stephen. In The Lesser Bohemians, McBride got inside his mind with a long passage of reported speech. In the new novel, she manages more adroitly. Stephen has made an autobiographical film. He shows it to Eily and his adolescent daughter (whose return after years of estrangement is an important strand of the plot). Eily describes it shot by shot. While much of the novel reads like a script – lots of dialogue – this section, paradoxically, does not. Eily, putting what she sees on screen into words, merges colour with sound, light with pace, always alive to the shift of a camera angle, to the way music accentuates mood. It's a bravura piece of descriptive writing. An inventive framework, then, but McBride's originality is most striking in the way she handles words. She uses verbs as nouns, nouns as adjectives. On a hot day 'the boil outside makes sloth of in here'; on a cold one, a caress is 'a skate of chill hands'. Stephen's damaging history is 'the past's thwart of your now'. McBride coins new words: 'blindling' for blindly stumbling. She gives familiar ones new cogency by misplacing them: 'all his vaunt's gone'. She is playful, planting puns and submerged quotations in the stream of Eily's consciousness. And then she will spin a line in which grubby imagery is rendered lyrical by rhythm: 'Down where the foxes eat KFC, and night drunks piss, and morning deliveries will bleep us headachely up from dreams.' Eily's sentences end abruptly with no regard for syntax. If a fragment is sufficient to convey a mood, then why plod on to completion? Punctuation is wayward. Word order is unorthodox enough to make some passages read like prose translated directly from the German. The tone shifts between Eily's whirling inner thoughts and the banality of everyday chat. And there is yet another voice, printed in a smaller font, the still, small voice of that part of Eily that whisperingly tells her (and us) when she is deluding herself. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion This novel, with the city in its title, is at its most lyrical not in love scenes but in cityscapes. McBride's characters are often cold, often rain-soaked, just occasionally getting sunburned on Hampstead Heath. Weather is important, because to venture into public space is perilous but necessary. A dream sequence conjures up the sensation of flying, not by soaring high in the blue but by adopting the point of view of a camera strapped to the underside of a pickup truck swaying down the Holloway Road. Within this teeming urban setting, though, the characters are isolated. Sometimes this means happiness: 'We were an atoll of our own.' Often it means confinement. A dark bedsit, where lovers squeeze themselves into a single bed. A shared flat whose uncurtained windows look on to an elevated walkway – nothing green in sight. McBride celebrates the city, its sadness and grunginess and grandeur. London, she writes, 'serves itself', indifferent to its inhabitants, 'unceasing in its ever on'. This is classic European modernism – McBride salutes Dostoevsky, Proust, Tarkovsky, Kundera – but it has been remade in the service of intimacy. Eily, lustful at an inappropriate moment, reflects 'what a great thing it is that thinking is private'. McBride, ignoring linguistic convention to bring us up close to her character, allows us the illusion that that privacy can be breached. The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride is published by Faber (£20). 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