Culture Desk
A week-long Korean Film Festival, featuring nine popular Korean films, started at Bangladesh National Museum from November 19.
Organised by the embassy of South Korea in Dhaka, the festival was formally inaugurated on November 20 by cultural affair minister Asaduzzaman Noor, in presence of South Korean ambassador to Bangladesh Ahn Seong-doo and Bangladesh National Museum director general Faizul Latif Chowdhury.
‘Films can represent a country- its people, culture, customs and so on. We may not be able to visit a country in person but by watching films on the country we can have an idea about the country- its people and culture’, said Asaduzzaman Noor.
Ode to My Father and The Beauty Inside were screened at the main auditorium of the museum at the first day of the festival.
Next day, three films were screened at the same venue. The films were The Thieves, Welcome to Dongmakgol and The Himalaya. A good number of film enthusiasts attended the screenings.
Three more films- How to Steal a Dog, A Hard Day and For Ever the Moment- wooed Dhaka audience on November 20.
Three more films- My Love My Bride, Ode to My Father and The Beauty Inside were screened on November 21.
Korean film first received serious international recognition in 2002. Well-known films include Oldboy (2003). Similar to Japanese films South Korean films are known for their violent content.
Korean films focus on the suffering and anguish of their characters, rather than gore. Asian film markets demand “action, melodrama, or horror content”. Korean films began production during the early 1960s and 1970s, making a comeback in the late 1990s, according to Korean film historian Chong Jongwha.
