Your KOFFIA Experience

Happy 2013 from everyone here at the KOFFIA Team!

Last year we had a great festival which once again managed to connect with audiences. After the festival period, we asked the attendees of KOFFIA 2012 to tell us about their experience. We had a wide variety of entries, and here we are highlighting a couple. Overall we are delighted that everyone had a great time at the festival, and cant wait for #KOFFIA2013!

Review: A Frozen Flower / 쌍화점 (2008)

A packed audience for A FROZEN FLOWER

The Korean Culture Office kicked off its 2013 Cinema on the Park lineup with a figurative bang this week with the showing of the 2008 movie ‘A Frozen Flower / 쌍화점’. I remember the movie opening in Korea five years ago under a hailstorm of hype, as movie internet sites buzzed about “graphic gay sex scenes”, “forced castration”, & “full frontal nudity”. ‘A Frozen Flower’ was controversial before it had even hit the cinema screen, and the KCO was clearly looking to match that controversy by showing it at 6:30pm on a pleasant Thursday evening in January.

Review: Happy Ero Christmas / 해피 에로 크리스마스 (2003)

Cinema on the Park’s 2012 lineup closed out with the wonderfully titled ‘Happy Ero Christmas’, a movie which pretty much demands a viewing just based on its name alone. The only movie by director Lee Geong-dong, the movie stars Cha Tae-hyeon (Speedy Scandal / 과속스캔들) as a down on his luck patrolman and Kim Seon-ah (She’s On Duty / 잠복근무) as a shy bowling alley attendant, whom as with any Korean romantic comedy, somehow have to end up together.

During this period of his career, made just a couple of years after the seminal ‘My Sassy Girl / 엽기적인 그녀’, Tae-hyeon was still being typecast as the underachiever with a heart of gold, and in this particular movie he seems to be playing a carbon copy of his character from ‘My Sassy Girl’ more than ever. Still, considering it was the kind of goofy charm that he pulls of so well that lead to his popularity, that’s not necessarily such a bad thing.