Koreatano's graveyard of honor and originality

[Chuck Stephens]

>On Aug 31, 2004, at 1:33 AM, Jason Gray wrote:
>
>>But once upon a time, Korea was bankrupt of ideas and
>>turned to Japan's seishun eiga boom in the 1960s for
>>material

though i know Jason has now qualified his use of the term "bankrupt", 
one recalls that there is a rather striking political history (i.e. 
censorship) interwoven with the Korean cinema of the 60s and 70s that 
may have had a *little* to do with what is being red-lettered here as 
a bankruptcy of ideas. it would take a truly blinkered vision of film 
history to assert that, even in its darkest, most censored days, 
Korean cinema had run out of things to say; the eventual 
international (re)discovery of directors like Kim Ki-young (whose 
pleasures in perversity and extraordinary art direction rival, but 
have little stylistically to do with, Japanese cinema of the period) 
will one day rather forcefully make this point.

and of course, to Michener it up a moment longer, along with the many 
actor-based examples already invoked, Japanese cinema has always 
remained so *purely* Japanese: Kurosawa's fondness for Ed McBain and 
Russian lit, Mizoguchi going to Hong Kong to make *Princess Yang Kwei 
Fei* for Shaw Brothers, the Nikkatsu period of *mukokuseki* action 
flicks -- which, if Jason is correct in the example he cites, is 
amusingly the studio and period from which that program's example of 
culture-theft originates -- and etc etc etc...

[p.s. to Alex: I wasn't aware that Nakahira Ko made films in Korea. 
was this after the period (throughout the 1960s) when he worked for 
Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong as a contract director?]

despite Jasper's quite correct and depressing assertion that almost 
nothing from the Korean cinema of the 60s and 70s is today available 
on DVD (though it is today quite easy to find, say, Monte Hellman's 
westerns on DVD at third-rate cd shops in suburban Korean shopping 
plazas), there has been a lively videotape culture in Korea for many 
many years, with Japanese films -- particularly anime and genre films 
-- available on videotape at rental shops and viewing libraries 
throughout the country since the [then still embargo-era] early 1980s.

cs