Director Yoon Jong Bin's latest film, The Spy Gone North, starring Hwang Jung-min, Lee Sung-min, Cho Jin-woong, and Ju Ji-hoon, portrays the true story of former South Korean agent, Park Chae-seo. The film premiered in the Midnight Screenings section of the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2018.
Synopsis
Set in 1993, with tensions running high in South Korea amid rumors surrounding North Korea’s nuclear weapon development, Park Seok Young is recruited by the National Security Agency to infiltrate the North Korean elite under the codename “Heuk-geum-seong” (Black Venus). He poses as a businessman seeking opportunities in North Korea, hiding his identity from even his family to approach Lee Myeong-Un, a high-ranking North Korean official residing in Beijing. As Seok Yeong manages to earn the trust of North Korean power players, he gets wind of a covert deal between the South and North Korean governments. Seok Young feels conflicted over risking everything for his country, given this new information.
NY Premiere
Director Yoon Jong-bin’s The Spy Gone North (공작, 2018)
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
6:00 PM | Reception
6:30 PM | Screening
9:00 PM | Discussion
Dolby 88
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
About the Director
Yoon Jong-bin is a South Korean film director known for his detailed portrayals of corruption and crime within society. He made his successful feature film debut in 2005, with the release of The Unforgiven, winning many awards at the 2005 Busan International Film Festival. He is also widely known for his film, Nameless Gangster: Rules of Time, which covered the topic of the Korean government’s declaration of war against organized crime in 1990. The film was a major success, topping the list of ten most watched films in South Korea for the first quarter of 2012.
About the Speaker
Charles Bramesco is a film and television critic living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Forbes, Nylon, Vulture, The A.V. Club, Indiewire, The Dissolve, Vox and Pitchfork. His favorite film is Boogie Nights.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Samuel Jamier is the executive director of The New York Asian Film Festival, North America’s leading festival of popular Asian cinema, “the world’s best-curated program of new and classic Asian cinema” (Indiewire), conceived and produced by Subway Cinema (and held at Film Society of Lincoln Center and SVA Theatre), a film and culture nonprofit which he also heads since 2015. He is also the founder of Windwellers Films and Citizen Pain Releasing Productions, a film producer, and a partner at the Hong Kong based film sales agency Good Move Media.
Until July 2013, he was senior film programmer and curator at Japan Society, responsible for the selection and organization of all films, series and festivals, and was in charge of its acclaimed Japanese Film Festival, Japan Cuts, for several years. Previously, he was senior programmer at The Korea Society, where he designed and executed cultural programming initiatives including an annual program of public lectures and workshops on topics ranging from foreign policy and corporate symposia to Korean cinema and traditional performing arts, hosted by heads of state, senior government officials, business leaders, university professors, authors, film directors and actors, as well as living national treasures.
Samuel Jamier earned doctoral, MA and BA degrees in English Literature, Comparative Literature, and Medieval Philosophy, with Honors, from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University; is an Agrégation Laureate in Modern English Literature; and a graduate from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. He also completed postgraduate studies at Tokyo University, Japan and King’s College in London, England.
He is of Korean descent, and grew up in Brittany, France.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.
