New York Korean Film Festival at MoMA (9/22-30) and BAMcinématek (10/1-3)

Now in its ninth year, the New York Korean Film Festival stands ready to benefit from U.S. cinephiles’ ever-increasing interest in Korean cinema. The NYKFF’s slate of only eight features may be fairly small in number, but seems carefully chosen to appeal to a wide range of tastes, from the gay-themed historical epic A Frozen Flower to the young-love melodrama Eighteen, from the “austere” and “experimental” Land of Scarecrows to the “whizz-bang time-traveling comic fantasy” Woochi. The festival opens with Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid, “freely adapted” from Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film of the same title. It’s a bold gamble to remake The Housemaid, which is both a revered modern classic and a singularly weird piece of work, but Im’s wild 2005 political satire The President’s Last Bang showed he’s not one to shy away from a challenge.

Go to the festival’s website for program and schedule information, trailers, and more.

—Nelson Kim

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