Poetry

2 February 2011
19.30-22.00 hrs.

Filmscreening organised by IIAS and Eye Film Instituut Nederland. Q & A with famed Korean director Lee Changdong afterwards.

Poetry

Mija lives with her middle-schooler grandson in a small suburban city located along the Han River. She is a dandy old lady who likes to dress up in flower-decorated hats and fashionable outfits, but she is also an unpredictable character with an inquisitive mind. By chance she takes a ‘poetry’ class at a neighborhood cultural center and is challenged to write a poem for the first time in her life. 

Her quest for poetic inspiration begins with observing the everyday life she never intentionally took notice of before to find beauty within it. And with this, Mija is delightfully surprised with newfound trepidation as if she were a little girl discovering things for the first time in her life.

But when she is suddenly faced with a reality harsh beyond her imagination, she realizes perhaps life is not as beautiful as she had thought it is…

About the director

LEE Changdong began a career in theater in his twenties and then moved on to work as a novelist and high school teacher during the eighties. His full-fledged career in film began in 1993 when he joined acclaimed social filmmaker PARK Kwangsu’s production of the film TO THE STARRY ISLAND as scriptwriter and assistant director – at friend and filmmaker PARK’s encouragement. He joined forces with PARK once again as scriptwriter on A SINGLE SPARK in 1995. He made his debut as a feature film director with GREEN FISH, a “one of a kind” Korean film noir. If GREEN FISH was an exploration of genre conventions and the real world, he continued his exploration of life and the cinema with PEPPERMINT CANDY, which experiments with the concept of going back in time, and OASIS, which searches for the meaning of true love. It was with these latter two films that he bested the critical and popular success he received for GREEN FISH, achieving both domestic and international acclaim and accolades. OASIS earned LEE and lead actress MOON Sori awards for Best Director and Best New Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

In 2002, he was appointed as Minister of Culture and Tourism. Upon being relieved from this official position in 2005, he founded his own production company, PINEHOUSE FILM through which he directed the company’s first film and his fourth feature, SECRET SUNSHINE. The superb performance of JEON Doyoun as the tormented Shinae in SECRET SUNSHINE earned her the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.

LEE currently teaches film directing and screenwriting at the Korean National University of Arts.

Venue and tickets

EYE, Film Instituut Nederland
Vondelpark 3, 1071 AA Amsterdam
tel.: 020-5891400
http://www.filmmuseum.nl/
e-mail: info@eyefilm.nl