Film series: Three by Bong Joon Ho
In celebration of the release of his latest film Mickey 17, we are thrilled to present three films by the acclaimed South Korean director Bong Joon Ho.
Born in Daegu, South Korea, Bong Joon Ho began his film education by watching movies on a television station for American military personnel stationed in South Korea. He went on to study sociology at Yonsei University—a hub for the 1980s democracy movement—before enrolling in the Korean Academy of Film Arts in the early 1990s, where he fully immersed himself in the study of international cinema. He made his directorial debut in 2000 with Barking Dogs Never Bite, which centers on a part-time college lecturer living in an apartment block who decides to take drastic action against his neighbor’s dog and earned Bong the best director award at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Since then, Bong has helped to transform Korean cinema, connecting with international audience in unprecedented ways through films like Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006), Mother (2009), Snowpiercer (2013), and Okja (2017). His 2019 film Parasite made history by winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film, and Best Original Screenplay.
Across his body of work, Bong Joon Ho demonstrates a fascination with genre and a persistent interest in themes of social inequality. Bong acknowledges filmmakers like Shohei Imamura, Alfred Hitchcock, and Quentin Tarantino as key inspirations, but his approach to genre also has a distinctly Korean flair, often rooted in standout performances by his frequent collaborator actor Song Kang-Ho. As film executive Scott Foundas writes, “Genre—not Korean—is his true mother tongue, and arguably no director since Quentin Tarantino (a friend and admirer) has taken such pleasure in using the familiarity of genre to lure audiences in, only to then, gleefully, upend our expectations.” From the Kim family in Parasite to the thwarted detectives in Memories of Murder, Bong Joon Ho’s films are, above all, a seering exploration of the human condition, examining without judgement the ways that individuals respond to circumstances of oppression, inequality, violence, and disenfranchisement.
Our Cornell Cinema series will feature three of Bong Joon Ho’s films: Memories of Murder (2003), Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), and Parasite (2019).
