Second Sunday Cinema presents—

Bong Joon-ho was born on September 14, 1969 in Daegu, 2011 saw Bong contributing a short film to an anthology, and South Korea, the youngest of four children. His father was a serving as a jury member for several international film festi- graphic and industrial graphic designer, art director of the Na- vals. tional Film Production, and professor who passed away in Bong released his first English language film Snowpiercer, 2017. His mother worked in the home taking care of the fami- based on a futuristic graphic novel that dealt with social status, ly. Both his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were a prominent theme in Bong’s future work. The film received renowned Korean authors. His family moved to Seoul when he universal praise and strong ticket sales, both in South Korea was in elementary school and he attended Yonsei University in and abroad, and appeared on several critics’ lists of the ten 1988 and majored in sociology. He was an active participant in best films of 2014. student demonstrations for the South Korean democracy movement. He served his compulsory two-year military service Filming for Bong’s next film, Okja, began in 2016 and the film and returned to college in 1992, graduating in 1995. While in premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It sparked contro- college he co-founded a film club, Yellow Door, and made his versy due to it being produced by Netflix, with boos mixed with first films. In the early 1990s, Bong completed a two-year program at the Korean Academy of Film Arts. He was invited to premiere his graduation films at the Vancouver and Hong Kong International film festivals. After graduating, he spent the next five years contributing in various capacities to works by other directors. His first feature film, Barking Dogs Never Bite, garnered posi- tive response from critics but not much interest from audienc- es. His second film, Memories of Murder, was a much larger- scale project that was released in April 2003 and was an imme- diate critical and popular success. He received his first interna- tional directorial award at San Sebastian. applause during a press screening at the festival. The festival later issued an apology to the filmmakers. Despite the negative Bong’s next major project, The Host (2006), brought about response, the film itself received a four-minute standing ova- wide international success. The story of a fictional monster tion following its actual premiere. rising up out of the Han River to terrorize Seoul, The Host was a major summer hit and enjoyed South Korea’s widest release In 2019, Bong directed Parasite. The film premiered at the ever and set new box office records. Universal bought the re- 2019 Cannes Film Festival winning the Palme d’Or. Bong was make rights. nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 77th In 2010, Bong’s film Mother premiered at the 2009 Cannes Golden Globe Awards with the film itself winning Best Foreign Film Festival, and garnered critical success locally and in the Language Film. Parasite has received six nominations at the international film festival circuit. 92nd Academy Awards.

February 2020  Runtime: 2 hours 12 min  Language: Korean / English  Rated R language, some violence and sexual content

*Films subject to change depending on availability. Second Sunday Cinema is a non-profit organization secondsundaycinema.org All Second Sunday Cinema showings will be at noon at the Fox Theater (27 S. Cascade Avenue, Montrose) writing tables of Confucian scholars -- hence their English TIDBITS and TRIVIA name: "scholars rocks." In interviews, director Bong Joon-ho talks about Parasite. He As far as working with Netflix again, Bong had a positive reac- admits that the project began as an idea for a play. Because tion to his experience. He felt that he had their support in of the space limitations, he started thinking about what story completing the film. He added that was why films like Roma he could tell with just two houses. The idea of a poor house by Alfonso Cuaron and The Irishman by Martin Scorsese were and a rich house came to mind because at the time he was possible. Noah Baumbach told Bong that he had a great ex- working on post-production for Snowpiercer, engrossed in perience shooting Marriage Story. Bong felt that all creators the story about the gap between the rich and the poor. these days would be interested in a partnership with Netflix The semi-basement apartment is a perfect metaphor for the who offered more flexibility and an exclusive theatrical win- blurred lines between rich and poor. Commonly found in the dow of four weeks. back alleys of Seoul, “the semi-basement means that you’re Ki-woo's job, at-home tutor, was chosen because Bong Joon half above the ground, half beneath it.” Ho realized that sadly that job is the only way that families Bong was also fascinated with the idea of infiltration. When from two extreme ends of the class spectrum in modern-day he was in college he tu- South Korea can cross their tored for a rich family. He paths convincingly in the got a feeling that he was story arc. infiltrating the private lives The Parks's house, said in of complete strangers. Eve- the film to be designed by a ry week when he would go fictional architect named into their house he thought Namgoong Hyeonja, was a about how much fun it set completely built from would be to get all of his scratch. friends to infiltrate the house, one by one. The first song of the closing credits is written by direc- Bong talks about how his tor Bong Joon-ho and sung films are always based on by lead actor Woo-sik Choi. misunderstandings. The audience knows more; the The original title of the film characters have a hard time Bong communicating with each other. Sadness and comedy all Joon-ho told The Hollywood Reporter, "When you look at the come from that misunderstanding. As an audience member, final results of a decalcomania or decal, both sides look iden- you feel bad – you want to step up and reconcile them. As a tical at a first glance. But if you look at it more closely, filmmaker, he always tries to shoot with sympathy. There they’re not exactly the same. This kind of explains something aren’t any villains in Parasite but, in the end, with all of the about these two families." misunderstandings, they end up hurting each other. The word "ram-don" was created by the translator for the When asked if there were references in the film that interna- film and is a dish consisting of two different types of instant tional audiences might not understand, Bong explained that noodles: black bean and spicy seafood flavor. The dish is ac- there are some very subtle trivial details that some audiences tually called jjapaguri and was too difficult to translate be- might not understand. “For example, there’s a Taiwanese cause it is a combination of two brand names. cake shop in this film; if you’re Korean or Taiwanese, you im- Bong didn't realize he included so much water when writing mediately know what that is. A lot of people who lost their the script, but did say it connects to the film's theme. He jobs gathered money to open these franchise cake shops, and told an audience at TIFF, "rather than water being important it was a huge trend for a while, but the businesses all failed, in itself, water flows from top to bottom, and I think that's pretty much at the same time. So a lot of people suffered the tragic and sad element in this film." from these failures; it was a big economic incident in our soci- – Excerpts from an interview in The Atlantic on ety that Western audiences wouldn’t understand.” October 15, 2019 by David Sims, BuzzFeed, and Wikipedia. Another example is the stone that Ki-woo possesses. Schol- ar's stones or landscape rocks, known as "suseok" in Korean, have a deep history in East Asia. Bong’s father collected them Receive Announcements of when he was younger. The practice of collecting these attrac- Second Sunday Cinema’s Upcoming Films tively shaped stones dates back thousands of years, but they Email us [email protected] became a fixture of Korean society during the Joseun dynasty to get on our email list or to update your email address. (1392-1897), when they were commonly displayed on the