Today the Korean film is formed in industry

A misinformed diplomat did pass in the language current the expression "country of the morning calm". The exact translation was "country in the fresh morning." On the occasion of the celebrations of the 120th anniversary of franco-coréennes diplomatic relations, the Paris film festival offers a selection of films that should remove any ambiguity: the Korea is not a calm country. His cinema is bubbly, on the contrary, of that seductive also explosive alertness.

Content, stifled and cut its public by more than twenty years of censorship and military regime, the Korean film woke up out of bed with the democratization of the 1990s. His stomach gargouillait of a devastating hunger, of a craving for blood, sex and fresh air. The young guard must have sprung on the screens as a pack of angry children is spreading in mess in the ring. Elders were often swept away by the storm of this new wave. "Filmmakers from the 1980s have almost disappeared, the filmmakers that we highlight have, for most, less than forty-five years," notes Jérémy Segay, which has scheduled the event. Guest of honour of the festival, Im blood-soo is the author of "A Korean woman" and "The President's Last Bang", one of the best films of the year, behind closed doors which recounts the assassination of dictator Park Chong-hui. It will review with interest his first film, touching "Girls Night Out", which described how raw and positive sexuality of three girls in the 1990s.

French craze

When this rage manifested not by sex, it was the fight. Directed by Park Chan-wook, the indispensable "Old Boy", the jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, tells how a man, imprisoned without explanation for fifteen years, returns to life, drooling at the lips, hammer in hand, driven by an irresistible desire to revenge. Unreported in France, "Die bad" (2000), Ryoo Seung-wan is likewise characteristic of this budding. At the age of twenty-seven, the author lia some wild shorts to form a long ball dark and haunting, nerve suite of fighting with bare hands.

At the end of the 1990s, all these films were still unknown to foreign audiences. Ten years later, the "land of the fresh morning" aligned film in each selection of the Cannes Festival, including "The song of Chunhyang faithful", Opera filmed of Im Kwon-taek, who a few weeks later became the first Korean success in France. Today, with a dozen of films per year, in theatres and at least as much on the DVD the Korea is by far the more this Asian country on our screens.

"For distributors, Seoul has become an eldorado," says Jérémy Segay. "However, some films are passed between the mesh of their nets and we wanted to catch up with these omissions by proposing here first unpublished films of known filmmakers." Do not miss the hectic comedy for Bong Joon-ho, "barking dogs never Bite", which plunges us into the maze of one of these spectacular bars of buildings that shape the landscape of Seoul, for a lost dog (we are, remind, in a country where the human's best friend is also sometimes his favorite dishes...). After this unfairly ignored candy, Bong had to sign one of the most daring thrillers of recent years: "Memories of Murder", thriller which evokes a series of killings unsolved during the dictatorship of the 1980s. Any singular, "The Host", his new film, is a history with Monster, special effects and big budget. Presented this year at Cannes, he leaves in France to the re-entry.

Today, the Korean film is formed in industry. It offers movies controlled, calibrated triumph in international markets. This new wild wave lasted only a few years, but was enough to publicize this small country outside its borders. This selection tells especially how, in the early 21st century, the Korea was the first country in the world to use film to impose its cultural identity.