Hallyuwood
The Ultimate Guide to Korean Cinema
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- $28.99
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
Ride the Korean wave (Hallyu) of cinema and explore the most exciting and captivating films in the world today.
From smash hits like Parasite to cult favorites Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Train to Busan, Korean cinema has revolutionized the film industry. Hallyuwood is a comprehensive, cultural dive into Korean cinema from 1900 to the present highlighting more than 100 major films from Golden Age classics to intriguing indies. Asian film expert and writer Bastian Meiresonne explores how Korean cinema found its roots and the cultural, historical, and political forces that have shaped the industry over the last 125 years.
With vibrant film stills and original movies posters throughout, Hallyuwood is a celebration of the past, present, and future of Korean cinema and a gateway to everything you need to know about these unique and thrilling movies.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this entrancing debut chronicle, film historian Meiresonne charts the evolution of Korean cinema against the country's transformation into a democracy. In the early 1900s, Korean theaters mostly showed European and American films and employed byeonsa (narrators) who stood near the screen to translate intertitles and explain cultural nuances. Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula loomed large over the country's early films, Meiresonne contends, discussing how the blockbuster success of 1926's Arirang, which follows a Korean protestor driven mad by his Japanese torturers, sparked a nationalist strain in early Korean film. The Korean War spurred a wave of melodramas—whose popularity, Meiresonne suggests, stemmed from their ability to capture audiences' "extreme sense of helplessness in a ravaged country"—as well as a series of dictatorships that banned any movie "likely to tarnish Korea's image abroad," effectively stamping out realist films. Elsewhere, Meiresonne discusses how independent movies tackled such formerly taboo topics as the Korean War after the country's democratization in the late 1980s, and how such films as Parasite garnered worldwide interest in Hallyuwood (a portmanteau of hallyu, a term for the growing prominence of Korean pop culture, and Hollywood) in the 2010s. Meiresonne seamlessly weaves film and political history into a riveting account of how Korean cinema alternatively capitulated to and challenged autocracy before growing into an internationally celebrated cultural export. Enriched by generous movie stills, this is a must for cinephiles. Photos.
