Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 306: Sat Nov 2

A Day Off (Man-hee, 1968): Regent Street Cinema, 2pm


This film is part of the 2019 Korean Film Festival. You can find full details here.

Far East Film introduction (full review here):
Heo-wook and Ji-youn are a young couple, desperately poor, who can only meet on Sundays. Without any money to go into a cafe, they wander the windswept streets and parks of Seoul. Their present circumstances are bleak, and their relationship seems strained. But they face a crisis: Ji-youn is pregnant. Unable to support a child, and with little hope for the future, she tells Heo-wook that she wants an abortion. Forgotten in storage for 37 years after censors refused to allow its release, A Day Off is now recognized as one of the modernist masterpieces of 1960s Korean cinema. Clearly influenced by European auteurs such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Alain Resnais, Lee Man-hee’s spare, lyrical images express all the desperation and pessimism that the characters themselves struggle to put into words. It is a work that combines bold aesthetic experimentation with an unflinchingly critical depiction of life for the young and poor in 1960s South Korea.
Darcy Paquet

Here (and above) is the Korean Film Festival trailer.

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