Film Archive set to welcome celebrated director Im Kwon-Taek

The Harvard Film Archive will welcome “the father of Korean cinema,” renowned director Im Kwon-Taek to the University on March 4 for a screening of “Chunhyang” at 7 p.m. The next evening (March 5), a reception in Im’s honor will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Sert Gallery Café, and will be followed by a screening of “Chihwaseon.” A Q&A session with the director will be held after both films.

Im, whose directorial career spans four decades, was the winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Director Prize in 2002 and a recipient of the Fellini Medal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Most recently, Im was awarded an honorary Golden Bear at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival in recognition of “his outstanding contribution to cinema.”

The upcoming Harvard events – to be held at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St. – is the second “Director in Person” event for the “Visions from the South: South Korean Cinema (1960-2004)” film series. The series is co-sponsored by the film archive; the Harvard University Film Studies Program; the Harvard University Korea Institute; the Korean Cultural Service, New York; the Korea Foundation; the Korea Consulate General in Boston; and the University of California, Irvine.

Drawing examples from horror films that allegorize the disintegration of masculinity and patriarchy in the 1960s, emotional exploitations of human relationships in the 1980s, and brutally painful portraits of degraded intellectuals in the 1990s, this series presents a cross-section of an increasingly vital national cinema that has recently spurred retrospectives in major film festivals and venues across the world.

For advance tickets, call the Harvard Box Office at (617) 496-2222. Visit http://www.harvardfilmarchive.org for more details.