Yu Hyun-mok
Birth : 1925-07-02, Sariwon, Hwanghae Province, North Korea
Death : 2009-06-28
History
Yu Hyun-mok (July 2, 1925 – June 28, 2009) was a South Korean film director. Born in Sariwon, Hwanghae, Korea (North Korea today), he made his film debut in 1956 with Gyocharo (Crossroads). According to the website koreanfilm.org, his 1961 film Obaltan "has repeatedly been voted the best Korean film of all time in local critics' polls." Yu attended the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1963, where Variety called Obaltan a "remarkable film", and praised Yu's "[b]rilliantly detailed camera" and the film's "probing sympathy and rich characterizations."
His dedication to the intellectual side of film and interest in using film to deal with social and political issues led him to have difficulties both with box-office-oriented producers, and with Korea's military government during the 1960s and 1970s. Korean critics have said his directing style is "in the tradition of the Italian Neorealists," yet "the terms 'modernist' or 'expressionistic' [are] just as applicable to his works."
Besides his directing activities, he has taught film, and made a significant contribution to Korean animation by producing Kim Cheong-gi's 1976 animated film, Robot Taekwon V. A retrospective of Yu's career was held at the 4th Pusan International Film Festival in 1999.
Yu died from a stroke on June 28, 2009.
Director
Director
A detective searching for the cause of a young man's death uncovers a melodramatic story involving prostitutes and religion.
Director
During the Korean War in early 1950s, mother’s family comes and stays at Dong-man’s house. His uncle on father’s side is a North Korean partisan and the uncle on mother’s side dies while fighting as South Korean soldier. For this reason, his grandmothers don’t get alone. Dong-man tells a stranger that his partisan uncle is home and his father gets arrested.
Director
Set after the unification of the Three Kingdoms, the film opens with a description of some of the lawlessness due to the threat of the Tang Dynasty, which was involved in the violent unification. During this time, a messianic prophecy arose in the countryside of an infant warrior that would be born that could overthrow the conquering Tang, heralded by a flying horse. Into this situation we meet a peasant, A Sadal, who we first discover stealing a Buddha statue from temple and stealing food from an old man dying of hunger. We then meet his wife, Sae Onyeo, and the happily married pair soon conceive and bear a child. However, reports of a flying horse abound and the Tang start a campaign to find the infant warrior, with potential consequences for the new parents in addition to the rest of their village.
Producer
Kongjui, who had been living alone with her father, welcomes a stepmother and a stepsister called Patchui into her life. When her father is out, the stepmother and Patchui make her do all the housework and the stepmother believes all of Patchui's lies and beats Kongjui mercilessly. When talks of marriage between Kongjui and the son of a respectable family come out one day, the stepmother does everything in her power to get Patchui married to the young man. Unaware of her stepmother's plans, Kongjui runs into the young man in the woods and the two fall in love.
Director
A man wanders around the mountains with a bleeding leg, holding a rifle in his hand. Seemingly a fugitive, he runs from as-yet unknown pursuers, but he also seems to be following somebody who has already walked the same path. As he hides in a secluded cave, past memories sweep through his exhausted mind, memories of lifelong cowardice and evasion. And this recollection leads to a reconstruction of early 20th century Korean history. Winner of Best Picture (Nam-a Pictures Co., Ltd.), Best Actor (Ha Myung-joong), Best Art Direction (Kim Yoo-joon), Best Lighting (Son Young-cheol) at the 14th Grand Bell Awards. (source: Jiro Hong, koreanfilm.org)
Director
Natasha, an officer at the Soviet Embassy in North Korea, is in love with Seok-bong. But Seok-bong has already planned his wedding with Bok-hui. Natasha grows jealous and threatens Bok-hui to leave somewhere else. Meanwhile Bok-hui's brother, Tae-yeong, is executed after participating in an anti-communist march. Seok-bong is accused of taking a part in the march. Seok-bong starts to feel pessimistic about his communist belief. He tries an escape to the South, but he is captured by the authority and executed.
Director
A school teacher on a remote island has to convince skeptical parents to allow him to take his class of young children to Seoul to experience modern, urban civilization for the first time.
Director
A man meets a woman on his hiking trip to Mountain Seorak, but she suffers from incurable diseases. He becomes infatuated with her hair. When he tells her about his feeling she promises him that she would leave her hair after she dies as part his heritage for the man. But when he looks for her later she is already dead, and her hair was already sold to another person. He meets another woman he becomes intimate with, but finds that she is his biological mother.
Director
Shortly after Korea gained independence from Japan (1945), North Koreans decide to extort civilians' property in the name of revolutionalizing its land and settle class struggles for proletariats. The film depicts an anti North-Korean concept, detailing the country's situation after the independence. South Korea's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968.
Director
The film deals with three different episodes. The first one deals with a story of an artist and a daughter of a noble scholar; the second about the life of a talented flutist and his love; the third about the story of love between a ceramicist who was commissioned to make a ceramic for the royal family and his wife.
Director
This film concentrates on a group of people who have trouble adjusting to mainstream society. From a woman running away from her previous life, to a man with a terminal disease, to a pop artist misunderstood by his contemporaries, the film looks on with sympathy and compassionate humor on a set of people who, for whatever reason, just don’t fit in.
Director
This film is a compilation of three short horror stories. They include a story of a wife ghost who was separated by death with her husband. She met him after praying for meeting a husband for 100 days. The wife ghost finally leads him to death. In the second story, a ghost of a dead wife who is jealousy of her husband's love of a barmaid sets them on fire. In the third, a male ghost tests a chaste woman's will not to be tempted by men.
Director
A grandfather, his son, and grandson are all henpecked husbands. A comedy picturing these three henpecked men's lives at one family.
Director
Hand is the second and last film produced by Cinepoem in 1966. Cinepoem is a film group founded by Yu Hyun-mok with the aim of producing avant-garde short films. Hand was directed by Yu, written by Choi Il-soo, shot by Kim Gi-Guk, and recorded by Park Ik-sun. It’s format is 35mm and B&W with a length of 50 seconds. The exceptionally short length of the film was set for submitting to the International and Universal Exposition in Montreal under the theme “Man and His World(Concours terre de hommes).” It organized a competition program for 50 seconds long films and called for works from all over the world. Winning works were supposed to screen in theaters as well on television. In the competition, 870 works from 37 countries were presented and 94 films were selected including Hand for screening at the opening of the Montreal International Film Festival.
Director
While under the effects of anasthesia in a dentist's office, a young man and woman fantasize a romantic triangle between themselves and the dentist.
Executive Producer
Out of fourteen ministers taken away by the communist troop, only two come back alive. The mystery behind their survival is at the issue here. Told through one of the survivor's testimony, depicts images of men troubled between the war and the religion. Although laden with anti-Communist notions from the 60's military regime.
Director
Out of fourteen ministers taken away by the communist troop, only two come back alive. The mystery behind their survival is at the issue here. Told through one of the survivor's testimony, depicts images of men troubled between the war and the religion. Although laden with anti-Communist notions from the 60's military regime.
Director
The professors' wife lives as abused mentally by her husband. One day the couple goes climbing with a young man, who works for a pharmaceutical company and often visits them on business. While they scales a cliff holding a rope, her husband under them loses his footing and falls down. When they all are about to fall, she cut the rope, so the husband died in a fall. She stands at the bar, but the court decides the case is an emergency evacuation. So she obtains an acquittal, but murderous intent in her mind must work on her.
Director
In a hospital waiting room, a group of men arrive and meet one another. Choe, is the upbeat fellow who always thinks of the nation and its people. Cheon was wounded in the war and has fallen into despair. Then there's the dentist, run ragged by his hectic life. They commiserate over each man's lot in life and exchange stories about their love affairs.
Director
After an aggressive man lets his anger get the better of him, his wife takes her own life and he is forced to go on the run. The son he leaves behind grows up to have 4 daughters, but there is rumored to be a curse on his family. As the daughters find their way into relationships the curse seems to be true. Allegations of child murder, infidelity, forced into marriages with raging psychopaths.
Director
Two brothers—Chul-ho, an accountant with a toothache and a pregnant wife, and Yong-ho, an unemployed ex-soldier wounded in battle—navigate life in post-war Korea.
Director
A 10-year old girl in a mining town, separated from her family, keeps a diary which becomes a best-seller.
Editor
Gwang-pil (Lee Ryong), Dal-su (Choi Bong) and Sang-mun (Choi Myeong-su) are gangster boys who pick pockets. Ae-ran (Do Geum-bong), who works at a bakery, and Gwang-pil have known each other from childhood and are lovers. The three gangster boys rob a US army warehouse, but only Gwang-pil is caught and placed in a juvenile reformatory. Hearing that Ae-ran works as a barmaid, Gwang-pil escapes from the reformatory to see her. While Gwang-pil meets her, he is caught by a cop who has been chasing him.
Director
Gwang-pil (Lee Ryong), Dal-su (Choi Bong) and Sang-mun (Choi Myeong-su) are gangster boys who pick pockets. Ae-ran (Do Geum-bong), who works at a bakery, and Gwang-pil have known each other from childhood and are lovers. The three gangster boys rob a US army warehouse, but only Gwang-pil is caught and placed in a juvenile reformatory. Hearing that Ae-ran works as a barmaid, Gwang-pil escapes from the reformatory to see her. While Gwang-pil meets her, he is caught by a cop who has been chasing him.
