DISPATCH FROM KOREA | Pusan Plays Itself; “Naked,” “Scarecrows” Take Top Nods

This evening of awards marked the halfway point of the festival and saw a slight shift in the feel of the festival. This year organizers moved the Asian Film Market and the Pusan Promotion Plan to the first weekend of the festival, guaranteeing a critical mass of filmmakers and industry would be on hand to kick the festival off. But when the AFM and PPP ended, the meetings, nightly ceremonies and various receptions came to an end and many of the Korean industry representatives headed back to Seoul. The remaining guests refocused their attention onscreen, delving deeper into the program and finding some undiscovered delights.

A thuggish debt collector comes to question his life choices in the surprisingly touching “Breathless.” Actor Yang Ik June wrote, directed, and stars in the film, which begins like so many other portraits of Korean machismo—within the first twenty minute of the film, the lead character has beat up a half dozen people, cussed out his boss and oldest friend and sucker punched a high school girl. Treading ground that could have gone so wrong so easily, Yang explores the troubled heart and soul of a character coming to terms with his violent past, violent present and what looks to be an inescapably violent future.

A scene from Ichii Masahide’s “Land of Scarecrows.” Image courtesy of the Pusan International Film Festival

”Nightmare Detective 2,” Shinya Tsukamoto‘s highly anticipated follow-up to his 2006 hit, finds its moody psychic hero in “Whispering Corridors” territory as he reluctantly helps a school girl haunted in her dreams by a vengeful schoolmate while, at the same time, he is struggling with visions of his own. Far less aggro than the first entry in the series (or, for that matter, than much of Tsukamoto’s filmography), “Nightmare Detective 2” employs some familiar J-horror images—water, distorted faces, ghosts with long, dark hair—but its dark perspective and circular logic casts them in a new light.

Tsukamoto’s film was a favorite among the late-night crown, but when the votes of the entire festival audience was tallied up at the end, Chris Martinez’s “100” emerged as the audience favorite, walking away with the KNN Movie Award. At a festival where the audience tends to skew towards college students, “100” drew an older audience. With tears in their eyes, they embraced this Filipino melodrama about a young woman, dying of cancer, who gives herself 100 tasks to do before it’s too late.

In New Currents, the festival’s main competitive section, which focuses on emerging Asian cinema, Roh Gyeong-tae‘s “Land of Scarecrows” and Masahide Ichii‘s “Naked of Defenses” were chosen as the jury’s favorites. Already the winner of the top prizes at the PIA Film Festival, “Naked of Defenses” is an unabashed “women’s picture” about two women—one very pregnant and the other struggling to come to terms with a recent miscarriage—who work side-by-side in a plastics manufacturing plant. With its working class milieu and female focus, “Naked of Defenses” recalls Courtney Hunt‘s “Frozen River,” but where Hunt’s film takes some unexpected turns along the way, Ichii’s hews closely to time-honored conventions and audience expectations. This is in stark contrast to fellow winner “Land of Scarecrows,” a multilayered look at cultural identities that will be a challenge to future audiences, which I wrote about in my previous report. The two films could not be more different and stand as a testament to the breadth of the festival’s programming. There’s to be a little something for everyone in Pusan.

Complete List of Pusan 2008 Award Winners

New Currents Award
“Land of Scarecrows”; directed by Roh Gyeong-tae (South Korea)
“Naked of Defenses”; directed by Ichii Masahide (Japan)
Special Mentions for “Members of the Funeral”; directed by Baek Seung-bin (South Korea) and “Er Dong”; directed by Yang Jin (China)

Sonje Award
“Andong”; directed by Rommel Tolentino Milo (Philippines)
“Girl”; directed by Hong Sunghoon (South Korea)

PIFF Mecenat Award
“Mental”; directed by Soda Kazuhiro (Japan)
“Old Partner”; directed by Lee Chung-ryoul (South Korea)

Fipresci Award
“Jalainur”; directed by Ye Zhao (China)

NETPAC Award
“Members of the Funeral”; directed by Baek Seung-bin (South Korea)
“Treeless Mountain”; directed by Kim So-young (South Korea/U.S.)

KNN Movie Award (Audience Award)
“100”, directed by Chris Martinez (Philippines)

[Doug Jones is Senior Programmer at Film Independent’s Los Angeles Film Festival.]