Cinephile JEONJU calls for reviewing and reconsidering cinema and its history. Since its launch in 2022, it has expanded to present 15 features and three shorts, along with various films and guests, to the extent that some may call this section a stand-alone little festival in the film festival. We aim to spur some curious cinephiles’ interest: Cinephile JEONJU features the longest (252 minutes) and the shortest (3 minutes) films presented in the JEONJU International Film Festival 2024. The titles in this section are all part of film history, although some are well-known, while others have yet to meet the Korean audience. Most are hard to find outside of the film festival settings. We hope the audience enjoys our wide selection of restored films, documentaries, and guests who will lead a discussion about cinema.
For starters, we have a series of restored films. Among them is Martha COOLIDGE’s Not a Pretty Picture (1975), showcasing that films that were ahead of time are indeed helpful in understanding the present. In a blend of narrative and documentary, the film deals with dating & sexual abuse, which has been around for a long while with no clear solution to it, and how society handles the sensitive issue. Despite its originality, the film was not easily accessible to the audience. The filmmaker’s use of every element of cinematic grammar rendered it delicate, creative, and as sensitive as its topic.
Restored titles by two great European filmmakers, Manoel de OLIVEIRA and Jacques RIVETTE, await the audience. A digitally restored and expanded version Abraham’s Valley (1993), directed by Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de OLIVEIRA was on screen at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. Inspired by Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the film unfolds a story of love and power set in Portugal. As we introduce this title, we cite de OLIVEIRA’s words here: “how a woman resists men, who are the power, using the force of her poetic vision of the world, even if it is just an illusion. Emma hangs onto lyricism, to the epic, to a way of making poetry from the world that surrounds her in order to resist the masculine characters, who see the world as nothing but a series of power games.”
Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, on L’Amour Fou (1969), commented: “This film captures the dreams and despair of the 60s like few others, and you emerge from it changed; it’s a life experience as much as a film experience.” As the title suggests, the film is about love and insanity; it unravels itself as if it were conversing with The Mother and the Whore (1973) by Jean Eustach, which was in the 2023 edition of Cinephile JEONJU.
Among the documentaries we managed to rescue from oblivion, Room 666 (1982) stands out. Filmmaker Wim WENDERS set up a static camera in an empty room at a hotel during the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. In front of the camera, fellow filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, and Steven Spielberg, answered questions about whether cinema is doomed to death. Forty years later, in 2022, filmmaker Lubna PLAYOUST conducted a comparable interview during the Cannes Film Festival. If anything changed in Room 999, that would be the cast: today’s film auteurs, such as Albert Serra, Claire Denis, Baz Luhrmann, David Cronenberg, and Alice Rohrwacher, speak about the cinema’s fate. What has changed so far? What has happened in the film industry? To figure out the answers, you will need to watch both.
I do not know what else to add to Viva Varda! (Pierre-Henri GIBERT) other than the name of Agnès Varda if I mean to pique the audience’s interest. In some senses, it is a biographical film on Varda with images and voices of her fellow filmmakers and friends that were previously unseen and unheard of.
Cinema Laika (Veljko VIDAK) invites us to a little town in Finland. We follow director Aki Kaurismäki and the villagers while they build a movie theater. We delve into their love for cinema and a filmmaker’s relentless endeavor and dedication to keeping the theater alive. Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch plays a cameo role in it.
Ospina Cali Colombia (Jorge DE CARVALHO) is an extensive interview about Luis Ospina, one of the most influential figures in Colombian film history. The title lists the director’s surname (Ospina), the name of the region he resided in, which is identical to the name of the artist group he belonged to, and his home country, Colombia, suggesting his identity deep-rooted in his films. This documentary tells us his thoughts and perspectives about cinema.
Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (Nancy BUIRSKI) narrates the background surrounding the birth of Midnight Cowboy (1975), a film that marked a pinnacle in New Hollywood Cinema from the late 60s to the early 70s. Stories behind the scenes tell us how the masterpiece utterly changed the lives of filmmaker John Schlesinger and actors Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. It does not merely highlight the film’s glory, such as winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, but also sheds light on how cinema captures the essence of a particular time and place.
Henry Fonda for President is the directorial debut of Alexander HORWATH, an Austrian film critic who served as the director of the Vienna International Film Festival (1992–97) and the Austrian Film Museum (2002–17). It follows a Hollywood icon, Henry Fonda’s trajectories, from his Dutch ancestors to his rebellious kids, Jane and Peter Fonda. During this journey, the filmmaker invites special guests such as John Ford and Sergio Leone on screen, making his title a roundtable where legendary footprints in film history intersect North American history.
David MARRIOTT will serve as the Guest Cinephile this year. He is an expert in film restoration and co-founder of Canadian International Pictures (CIP) and Arbelos Films, art-house film distributors specializing in post-production and high-definition digital restoration. His restoration work includes Bela Tarr’s masterpiece Satantango (1994), Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971), and Nina Menkes’s Works. As he completes three restoration projects unveiling secrets of Canadian film history, he's visiting Jeonju. He will bring us the following titles to Korean audience: Winter Kept Us Warm (David SECTER, 1965), a film known to have inspired David Cronenberg to pursue filmmaking; the rarely known directorial debut of the director of Pump Up the Volume (1990), The Rubber Gun (Allan MOYLE, 1977); and Hookers on Davie (Janis COLE and Holly DALE, 1984), a documentary depicting a harsh reality which still resonates with the social problems we see today. It is an uncommon opportunity to watch hidden Canadian treasures from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s in one setting. Moreover, we have a special session to hear David MARRIOTT’s voice on these selected titles and his restoration work.
Haden GUEST, director of Harvard Film Archive, also visits Cinephile JEONJU. A good friend and supporter of the festival, he will introduce experimental films he curated this year. 35mm screenings of Allures (1961) by Jordan BELSON, Work Done (1972/1999) by Robert BEAVERS (from Harvard Film Archive collection), and Side/Walk/Shuttle (1991) by Ernie GEHR (Museum of Modern Art collection) wait for the audience. Japanese scholar and film critic HIRASAWA Go visits Jeonju as well. He is to share his experience participating in the restoration project of AKA: Serial Killer (1969), an unusual work by ADACHI Masao. At Cinephile JEONJU, the audience can watch AKA: Serial Killer in two different versions: the 35mm film owned by the Asian Culture Center (ACC) and a Japanese digital restoration.
Lastly, here are more details about the aforementioned short film, Arsenal Film Archive, directed by experimental filmmaker Ute AURAND. The running time is less than three minutes; however, it is a beautiful record of Berlin’s historical archive. JEONJU International Film Festival recently hosted a special screening at Arsenal to commemorate JEONJU Digital Project, and we are honored to be a part of Arsenal’s history.
Most titles introduced in Cinephile JEONJU belong to the past or talk about the past. However, they speak to us living today. We are not merely to rescue the cinematic projects of the past from oblivion. Instead, we want cinema to tell us how much challenge the past calls for us and what questions the past asks us about the present—not only the present of cinema but also that of society. We live in an era when nothing is “recently released” because too many things are presented and released. This era makes Cinephile JEONJU even more special as it brings the past and the present together. What does it mean to “disappear?” Like every aspect of life, if we cease to pay attention to something, stop watching it and talking about it, it dies out and disappears. Here is our modest proposal: through Cinephile JEONJU, we will keep helping make cinema, its history, and the people hereof stay alive; keep going.
Programmer Sung MOON
fold -
fold -
