13th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 27 - Jul 14, 2014

FilmsGuestsSchedule & Tickets

Photo:

North American Premiere

Rough Play

배우는 배우다

Rough. Raw. Real. The Kim Ki-duk school of filmmaking has given us several great projects produced and written by Kim and directed by young filmmakers: Poongsan, Bedevilled, and now we have Rough Cut's spiritual successor in Rough Play. The film opens with crazed actor Oh Yeong (K-Pop idol Lee Joon playing totally against type) dragging a mannequin up the stairs of a department store and spouting some rather menacing dialogue. Intercut with this is a stage performance from early in his career where Oh takes his performance a bit too far and threatens the actress he's doing a scene with. The rest of the film expands outward from these two moments and shows Oh's rise and violent fall under the influence of mobbish manager Kim Jang-ho (Seo Bum-suk). Lee Joon is absolutely captivating in a performance that is all about the destruction that narcissism and rampant ego can bring. He lets it all hang out and embodies Oh's (literally) insane dedication to his craft. A darker than dark take on the Korean film industry, Rough Play rails against the apathy of a business wholly concerned with appearance and that gives no long-term thought to the future.

Director: Shin Yeon-shick
Cast: Oh Gwang-rok, Ma Dong-seok, Yang Dong-geun, Seo Bum-suk, Kang Shin-hyo, Seo Yeong-hee, Lee Joon
Languages: Korean with English subtitles
2013; 98 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Tuesday July 1, 6:30pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

Q&A with director Shin Yeon-shick.

Shin Yeon-shick
신연식

Born in Seoul in 1976, Shin Yeon-shick comes from a Spanish studies background. Opting for a filmmaking career, he made his directorial debut (Piano Lesson) in 2002 on a micro-budget ($300), before fully dedicating himself to cinema. In 2005, he directed the black-and-white indie A Great Actor, which had its international premiere at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. With The Fair Love (2009), a nuanced, offbeat inter-generational romance featuring Ahn Sung-ki and Lee Ha-na, Shin received considerable critical acclaim and gained a wider, more mainstream audience. In 2012, the ambitious art house drama The Russian Novel earned him the Vision Section Director Award at the Busan International Film Festival.

With Rough Play (2013), which is presented for the first time in New York, director Shin, working with pop star Lee Joon, takes a story written by Kim Ki-duk, and goes behind the scenes of the Korean film industry, showing what few would dare to show, and exploring both the darker side of acting and actors, as well as the dirt behind the glamor of the silver screen.

His latest film, The Avian Kind, recently had its world premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival