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The 29th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival has officially kicked off.

On June 10, the official press conference of the 29th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival was held in the morning at Fantastic Cube in Bucheon and in the afternoon at the Baekbeom Kim Koo Memorial Hall in Seoul.

The press conference opened with welcome remarks from the newly appointed Organizing Chairperson Chang Mihee, an introduction to this year’s festival by Festival Director Shin Chul, and presentations on each section by the festival programmers. The spotlight was especially on the premiere of the official trailer and section highlights, produced using AI technology by Studio Freewillusion.

Bucheon Mayor Cho Yong-eek attended the Bucheon session of the press conference, adding significance to the event. Chairperson Cho Yong-eek expressed his gratitude to Chairperson Chang Mihee and Festival Director Shin Chul, saying, “When people are asked what comes to mind when they think of Bucheon,...

On June 10, the official press conference of the 29th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival officially kicked off the 29th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (July 3~July 13).

Festival Director Shin Chul declared that Bifan has entered “AI Step 2” this year, following last year’s initial stage, and shared an ambitious goal to train 10,000 filmmakers over the next five years. Director Shin also referenced a famous remark by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, who once said, “Even after 4,500 years, computers will not make better films than I do.” He continued, “We trained an AI model using Herzog’s scripts, interviews, and other materials. The result was a screenplay titled “About a Hero”, which has been selected as this year’s Opening Film at Bifan.”

Jongsuk Thomas Nam (Programmer), Park Boram (Xr Curator), Chang Mihee (Organizing Chairperson), Shin Chul (Festival Director), Martin Lee, Jin Park, Kani Kim (Programmers)

The programmers took the stage to...

Kim Ho-sun, one of the key directors of 1970s cinema, returned to the spotlight in the early 1990s with the sprawling period romantic epic Death Song, about the torrid affair between Korea's first professional soprano and a playwright during Korea's Japanese Colonial Era in the 1920s. Chang Mi-hee plays Yun Sim-deok, a Korean student studying singing in Tokyo, where she befriends a group of Korean male students preparing to tour the country with a play. Among them is the aloof playwright Kim Woo-jin (Kim Sung-min), the only member of the group not openly admiring her bountiful charms. Woo-jin eventually comes around to those charms, but since he is already married, this forces the pair down an illicit path. The pair also bond over their shared...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

There's a running joke—at least, I think it's a joke—that if you shoot part of your film in the French city of Cannes, you will automatically be selected by its film festival. Sneaky Hong Sang-soo, then, who quietly and quickly shot the short feature Claire’s Camera last year with Kim Min-hee, who was at the festival for The Handmaiden, and Isabelle Huppert, who was there with Elle. And now, this year in Cannes, here is the film. A nimble and thrifty filmmaker often directly inspired by the places he goes and the people he meets, Hong's wry and plaintive short story satirizes the film industry—raging unseen and unheard offscreen—while ennobling the magic of happenstance meetings and chance’s circuitous ironies.The film begins in a space possibly never seen in cinema: a temporary office in Cannes rented by a sales company to promote the film's they represent.