This month we invite you to enter the eccentric and disquieting world of Korean B-movie master Kim Ki-young (1919-1998), a maverick stylist whose films have been called "like Douglas Sirk on acid." "Passion and revenge articulating the tensions of tradition and rapid modernization are his hallmarks. The screen steams with eroticism," writes Asian cinema scholar Chris Berry. Kim explored sex, death, and paranoia in over thirty features. The bizarre and overwrought sexuality of these films along with Kim's mod-baroque visual style earned him the moniker "Mr. Monster." He never left the realm of the B-movie, but like Sam Fuller and Roger Corman here, Kim's influence in Korean cinema should not be underestimated. Rather, his sophisticated aesthetics, including set designs and props "chockablock with fever dream images"(Chuck Stephens), as well as the manipulation of sound bordering on funk, set important precedents. The Housemaid, 1960, a typically lurid tale of domestic destruction, is hailed as a Korean expressionist masterpiece, and we have a chance to see how Kim's style evolved in his remake of that film, Woman of Fire '82, where color and stained glass take over. Male fantasy would seem to drive these narratives, particularly in the "housemaid" series of films where a married man becomes sexually involved with the domestic help. Kim's penchant for sexually predatory women and useless men is unmistakable; however, like Japan's Shohei Imamura, what Kim depicts through grotesque imagery is very simply the power of human will, the will of the weak to survive. Hence a title like Killer Butterfly.The once prolific filmmaker who hadn't completed a film in almost fifteen years was brought to international attention with a retrospective at last year's Pusan Film Festival. Seventy-eight years old at the time, he was eager to return to filmmaking. That was not to be, as Kim and his wife died tragically in a fire in their home in Seoul on February 4.This series is presented in cooperation with The Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Film Society. All prints are courtesy the Korean Film Archive. Special thanks to Jin-Seok Park, Korean Film Archive; Alissa Simon, The Film Center; and Rachel Rosen, San Francisco Film Society. Film notes for the series are by Chris Berry, a professor of film studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and a prolific writer on Asian cinemas.Thursday July 2, 1998
