Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St., Maysles Cinema, 343 Malcolm X Blvd., the Quad, 34 West 13th St., the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., the Center for Remembering and Sharing, 123 Fourth Ave., and the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave.
March 16-22, free – $15 (all access pass $200)
www.ratedsrfilms.org
Started last year by Nora Armani as a response to the violence in mainstream movies, both in the narrative as well as the style of filmmaking, the Socially Relevant Film Festival consists of fiction and nonfiction films from more than thirty countries focusing on “human interest stories that raise awareness to social problems and might offer positive solutions through the powerful medium of cinema.” The festival, running at Tribeca Cinemas, Maysles Cinema, the CUNY Graduate Center, the SVA Theatre, the Center for Remembering and Sharing, and the Quad, opens March 16 with a free screening (advance RSVP recommended) of Hϋseyin Karabey’s Come to My Voice, in which a young Kurdish girl, with her grandmother, has to find a gun to free her imprisoned father. Other programs include Michael Buckley’s Plundering Tibet with Giordano Cossu’s Umudugudu! Rwanda 20 Years On; Justin Thomas’s Truth Through a Lens, about the evolution of onetime Brooklyn street kid Dennis Flores; Matthias Leupold’s Lighter than Orange, which looks at the human cost of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam; and Kaouther Ben Hania’s mockumentary Challat of Tunis, about the vicious slashing of eleven women in 2003. Most screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and other guests. There will also be panel discussions on distribution, storytelling, casting, and, closing the festival, “Next: An Open Dialogue on the Potential of Art as a Revolutionary Tool,” with Jessica Vale and Cherrell Brown, moderated by Adam Kritzer.
After their father (Park Sung-woong) is declared a traitor to North Korea and killed, Lee Myung-hoon (Choi Seung-hyun) and his younger sister, Lee Hye-in (Kim Yoo-jung), are placed in a forced labor camp. When Myung-hoon is nineteen, North Korean agent Moon Sang-chul (Jo Sung-ha) offers him a way out: if he agrees to be a spy/assassin for Kim Jong-Il’s regime, he and his sister will eventually be freed. Accepting the mission, Myung-hoon goes to Seoul, where he attends high school as a cover and makes friends with a loner girl (Han Ye-ri) with the same name as his sister. This Hye-in wants to be a dancer, which brings up memories of Myung-hoon’s childhood dreams of becoming a successful pianist — a long way from being an expert killer, as he carries out his jobs with pinpoint precision. But as Kim Jong-il suddenly falls ill and his son, Kim Jong-un, prepares to take over as supreme leader, all bets are off and it gets harder and harder to know who’s on which side. One day Myung-hoon is messing with a group of tough students who are bullying Hye-in, and the next he is in the middle of a complex plot involving drugs, laundered money, diamonds, and double crosses. Also known as Alumni, Park Hong-soo’s Commitment is an exciting if bumpy thriller about family, loyalty, and friendship. Choi, who is better known as K-pop star T.O.P. of Big Bang, is dark and moody as the teenage assassin who will do anything to protect his sister, while Kim’s character goes through a sudden, hard-to-believe change about halfway through the film. Things get far too convoluted in the final scenes, the plot heading off in all kinds of ridiculous directions, but Choi manages to make it all worthwhile. Commitment, which is playing in several New York City theaters right now, can be seen for free on January 14 at 7:00 at Tribeca Cinemas, kicking off the Korean Movie Night series “Wild Days: Coming of Age in 2014.” Presented by the Korean Cultural Service, the series continues on January 28 with Kwak Kyung-taek’s Friend: The Great Legacy and February 11 with Won Shin-eon’s The Suspect before concluding February 25 with Kang Yi-kwan’s Juvenile Offender.
The free Korean Movie Night series “Laughter and Love at the Box Office!” continues June 11 at Tribeca Cinemas with the bittersweet romantic tale Architecture 101. Former architect Lee Yong-zoo’s second feature film, following Possessed, examines the building of personal relationships as well as the construction of homes as a pair of grown-ups consider what might have been. When Seo-Yeon (Han Ga-in) enters the firm where Seung-Min (Uhm Tae-woong) works, the thirty-five-year-old architect appears initially not to know her, but it turns out that they explored the possibility of first love together fifteen years earlier at school. Lee cuts back and forth between the present, in which Seo-Yeon hires Seung-Min to rebuild a house for her, and the past, when Seung-Min (Lee Je-hoon) and Seo-Yeon (Bae Su-ji) are still figuring out what they want out of life and love, trying to understand the desire churning inside them. In the present, Seo-Yeon says she has been married for three years, and Seung-Min is secretly engaged to his assistant, Eun-Chae (Koh Joon-hee). Meanwhile, in the past, Seung-Min doesn’t know what to do about his feelings for Seo-Yeon, who seems to like one of his best friends, Jae-Wook (Yoo Yeon-seok). The past, present, and future meld into one over the musical theme of pop star Jeon Ram-whe’s sappy Korean ballad “Etude of Memory” as true love tantalizingly hangs just out of reach. Architecture 101 is a beautiful yet heartbreaking film with superb performances — Bae and Jo Jung-suk, who plays Nabddeuckyi, a confidant of the younger Seung-Min’s based on the director himself, both won Best New Actor awards for their portrayals — and a compelling narrative structure that builds to a powerfully emotional climax. “Laughter and Love at the Box Office!” concludes June 25 with Jo Sung-hee’s romantic fantasy hit A Werewolf Boy.
