On today′s Arts and Culture segment... the Jeonju International Film Festival is gearing
up for its 16th edition later this month. Our film critic Pierce Conran will be attending
and he′s here with his picks for the fest.
So compared to Busan， Jeonju is more of an arthouse festival， right？
I′d say that′s a fair assessment. Busan is a much bigger event that includes plenty
of arthouse but also some mainstream and genre fare， while Jeonju is more inclined towards
indie and art films. It′s a huge supporter of local emerging
filmmakers and screens some pretty hard to find international art films.
Can you go over the broad strokes for this year′s edition？
The event has actually slightly expanded this year after a new CGV opened in the centre
of town and it′ll act as the main venue for the festival.
There will be a total of 200 films， hailing from 47 countries this year.
Opening the event will be Australian director Ariel Kleiman′s ″Partisan″， which
features Vincent Cassel， whom you might know from ″Ocean′s Twelve″ and Thirteen.
The festival also produces new films. Is that unique in the Korean film festival world？
That′s correct. For years they′ve commissioned the Jeonju
Digital Project， which was an omnibus of three shorts from invited directors.
Last year， the projects were expanded to features and this year they renamed as the
Jeonju Cinema Project. For this year′s festival， there are two
Korean films， notably both by women， ″Samnye″ by LEE Hyun－jung， and ″Snow Paths″
by KIM Hee－jung. There′s also ″El Movimiento″， from
Argentine filmmaker Benjamin Naishtat， who picked up the Grand Prize at the festival
last year. All three of last year′s projects have met
with great success on the festival circuit， so expectations are high this time around.
Are there any other major Korean films screening this year？
There are two sections for them， the Korean Competition and the Korean Cinemascape. The
competition focuses on works from younger and generally lesser known filmmakers， but
there are some reasonably big names in Cinemascape. This category will present new films by PARK
Ki－yong ， SHIN Yeon－shick ， LEE Sang－woo ， WHANG Cheol－mean and BONG Man－dae
. How about international movies？ Any big
titles to forward to？ There′s plenty to choose from.
Among well－known titles that have screened elsewhere， there is Peter Strickland′s
″The Duke of Burgundy″， Paul Thomas Anderson′s ″Inherent Vice″ ， Alex
Ross Perry′s ″Listen Up Philip″， Susanne Bier′s ″A Second Chance″， Noah Baumbach′s
″While We′re Young″， Ana Lily Amirpour′s ″A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night″ and
David Michod′s ″The Rover″. I think it′s fair to say that BIFF is Korea′s
most famous film festival， but you were telling me earlier that you would still very
much recommend Jeonju festival. This year will be my
third trip and I′ve enjoyed both of
my previou