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I guess that everybody interested in Korean cinema already know about this YT channel with films: http://www.youtube.com/user/KoreanFilm
I've realized today that month ago they uploaded "Chunmong"! AFAIK it was never released on VHS/DVD, so it's really a big deal (for me at least). It's a (much superior dare I say) remake of Tetsuji Takechi's "Hakujitsumu", less erotic, but more surreal. Bad guy is much more creepy here (you can sense kind of "Korean Coffin Joe" vibe from him) and it has beautiful sets heavily inspired by "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari". Amazing film, I highly recommend it. Watch it here with English subs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TC23tePlAc
From http://www.koreafilm.org
"The most pretentious and overweening of director Yoo Hyeon-mok's films, but also the most experimental" (Cho Young-jeong)
Classified by the director himself as an experimental film, The Empty Dream most clearly reveals Yoo Hyeon-mok's interest in cinematic forms. As indicated by its title, the movie depicts a dream world. The contents of the dream are visualized through images, and because such images are impossible to narrativize in a linear, progressive manner the film is composed of disjointed images. Although the dream features a diabolical man and a young couple who are trying to get away from him, it is impossible to impose a causal relationship on what transpires among them. The Empty Dream firmly maintains its center of gravity on cinematic form, rather than on storytelling. What stands out in this formal experimentation is the influence of Soviet Montage editing and the mis-en-scene of German Expressionism. Such Western modernistic forms had the greatest impact on Yoo Hyeon-mok's films since he first debuted. The spaces featured in the dream reveal an especially strong debt to German Expressionism. They virtually recreate the sets of Expressionist films: the slanted buildings and screens crisscrossed with intricate angled, vertical, and horizontal lines stretching all the way to the floor directly recall such Expressionist classics as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film also experiments overtly with montage. For instance, the scene in which the protagonist, played by Shin Seong-il, has his tooth drilled is juxtaposed with the image of drilling at a construction site. It is all but impossible to find a commercial film in Korea from the 1960s to the present day that has so boldly faced the problem of form as The Empty Dream. In this sense, The Empty Dream is a film that marked a rare moment in Korean cinematic history.
Classified by the director himself as an experimental film, The Empty Dream most clearly reveals Yoo Hyeon-mok's interest in cinematic forms. As indicated by its title, the movie depicts a dream world. The contents of the dream are visualized through images, and because such images are impossible to narrativize in a linear, progressive manner the film is composed of disjointed images. Although the dream features a diabolical man and a young couple who are trying to get away from him, it is impossible to impose a causal relationship on what transpires among them. The Empty Dream firmly maintains its center of gravity on cinematic form, rather than on storytelling. What stands out in this formal experimentation is the influence of Soviet Montage editing and the mis-en-scene of German Expressionism. Such Western modernistic forms had the greatest impact on Yoo Hyeon-mok's films since he first debuted. The spaces featured in the dream reveal an especially strong debt to German Expressionism. They virtually recreate the sets of Expressionist films: the slanted buildings and screens crisscrossed with intricate angled, vertical, and horizontal lines stretching all the way to the floor directly recall such Expressionist classics as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film also experiments overtly with montage. For instance, the scene in which the protagonist, played by Shin Seong-il, has his tooth drilled is juxtaposed with the image of drilling at a construction site. It is all but impossible to find a commercial film in Korea from the 1960s to the present day that has so boldly faced the problem of form as The Empty Dream. In this sense, The Empty Dream is a film that marked a rare moment in Korean cinematic history.
