A new independent film festival will kick off in Seoul next week with a focus on the expatriate experience.
The Korea Expat Film Festival KIXFF kicks off Thursday, with a lineup of nine feature-length movies and 38 short films, to be played over four days in venues across Seoul.
The festival is slightly larger than originally conceived, but co-organizer Kevin Lambert said it had kept its original spirit. Many of the screenings will be held in small expat hangouts.
“I think a lot of people are really supporting this idea of small film festivals, that do their own thing, and hopefully this programming reflects that,” he said.
The festival set out with two main themes it wanted to cover ― “no-budget” films made with extremely limited resources, and expat films. Lambert said he was happy with how well they had managed to match these themes, with five of the nine features having expat themes.
“Dive” will be shown Thursday as part of the Korea Independent and Expat Film Festival in Seoul.
“We managed to focus on the topics fairly clearly, and each film takes a very different perspective on that ― displacement or expatriatism or ideas of alienation in general. So we cover a lot of ground that is representative of a lot of cultures and a lot of countries.”
Among the features are “Dive” by Norwegian director Eilif Bremer, “Adagio” by Argentine filmmaker Rafael Escolar and “I am not From Barcelona” by Belgian director Stephane Lecierq.
Two locally made features will also be shown: “Haebangchon” by James Williams III and “The Romance of a Mediocre Actress and a Short Bald Man” by Park Young-im and Kimjung Min-woo.
The final film to be screened will be “Home Video” by Mark Ostrowski.
“It is a documentary about an American who has lived in Spain for 20-odd years and about how he has pretty much given his American identity away and why that is,” said Lambert. “I think it’s a convincing portrayal of what it means to be an expat.”
The opening day’s screenings will be short films made by local expats. Also on the opening day will be a producer’s workshop with Korean filmmaker Lee Joon-dong, who produced the award-winning films “Poetry” and “A Girl at My Door.”
Writer on Korean film Darcy Paquette will host the workshop with Lee, which will be given in Korean and translated to English. They will focus on low-budget filmmaking and funding for international coproductions.
“This is a really good opportunity for encouraging more local filmmaking,” said Lambert. “I know that there are a lot of film students here and a lot of people are interesting in making documentaries in their spare time. So hopefully (Lee) will be able to give them a few good ideas on how to move forward with their projects.”
Many of the feature films will be accompanied by workshops or Q&A sessions with the director.
An opening night party will be held at the Riverside Hotel in Seocho-gu on Thursday from 10 p.m.
For more information or ticket reservations, visit kixff.com. Tickets for each event will also be available at the door.
By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)