Dubai International Film Festival recognizes great Korean director

The fourth edition of the festival will recognize the great Korean director Im Kwon-Taek, screening two of his iconic works.

Im, who will be present at DIFF, is recognized as one of the founding figures of the 'Korean New Wave' movement, which gained international critical recognition and acclaim for Korean Cinema. He specialises in powerful and emotional stories told in stunning imagery, often focusing on the lives of artists. Im was recently awarded France's highest order, Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour, launched by Napoleon in 1802.

Im's hundredth film, 2007's Beyond the Years, will screen with his Chihwaseon (Drunk on Women and Poetry), the 2002 film that shared the Best Director Award at Cannes with PT Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love.

As a neophyte director, Im initially aspired to make action films, but for budget reasons was forced to settle for low-budget period films, which he continued to make even when he gained access to more funding. Many of his films are permeated with 'han,' a blend of melancholy and rage that appears in numerous Korean works. His work is both popular and critically acclaimed: Sopyonje (1993) was the first domestic film to draw over a million viewers in Seoul alone.

Chihwaseon was also a critical success, for which Im was awarded an honorary Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2005. Chihwaseon depicts the life of Jang Seoung-up, a tempestuous and misunderstood artist who began as a destitute, abused child and became a respected artist whose rebellious nature poured out in lush, sumptuous landscapes and still-lifes. Critics surmise that the character of Jang represents Im himself. To tell the story of this unusual artist's life, Im employs a series of unfolding screen universes, each a world onto itself and yet intimately connected to the other.

Beyond the Years is another contemplative and beautiful period piece that is presumed to be an allegory for the anguish at the centre of Korean national identity. But the film is also a story of unrequited love between Song-hwa, a mysterious, ethereal pansori singer raised by an adoptive father, and her adoptive brother, Dong-ho. He runs away, unable to follow his father's itinerant lifestyle. Years later, he returns to the village of their youth, searching for Song-hwa.

The Lifetime Achievement Awards films will screen as part of DIFF 2007, which runs from December 9 to 16.

DIFF's Principal Sponsors are Dubai Duty Free, Dubai Pearl, Emirates and Jumeirah.