O Muel | |
|---|---|
| Born | Oh Kyung-heon 1971 (age 53–54) |
| Alma mater | Jeju National University |
| Occupation(s) | Film director,screenwriter |
| Years active | 2003-present |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 오경헌 |
| Revised Romanization | O Gyeongheon |
| McCune–Reischauer | O Kyŏnghŏn |
| Nickname | |
| Hangul | 오멸 |
| Revised Romanization | O Myeol |
| McCune–Reischauer | O Myŏl |
O Muel (born Oh Kyung-heon in 1971) is a South Koreanfilm director andscreenwriter. He wrote and directed the award-winning filmJiseul in 2012.
O Muel was born and raised onJeju Island, and studied Korean painting atJeju National University.[1] In 1998, he became the director of the Jeju-basedculture collective Terror J and organized an annual street art festival called Flower for a Head. O is also the co-director of the Jeju Independent Film Society and acts as artistic director of the theater troupe Japari Research Center.[2]
As afilm director, O chose his native Jeju as the setting for all his films, focusing on the island's unique lifestyle, nature and people. He began his filmmaking career with twoshort films in 2003,Putting on Lipstick Thickly andFlower for a Head.[3] In 2009, O made hisfeature directorial debut withNostalgia, which follows a pair of middle-aged amateur musicians who beg a once-promising rocker to be their mentor, as the latter deals with his mother's death. This was followed byPong Ddol (2010) about the humorous travails of a first-time filmmaker and whose title refers to the stone and metal objects attached to the end of a fishing rod, andWind of Island (2011) about a young mother forced to abandon her only child.[4]Nostalgia andPong Ddol received a theatrical release in 2011.[5]
It was his fourth feature film,Jiseul (meaning "potato"), that brought O both domestic and international critical acclaim.[6][7] Based on a tragic but largely forgotten historical event set during theJeju uprising in April 1948, O cast non-professional local actors speaking in their nativeJeju dialect to play a group of villagers who hid in a cave for 60 days, suffering cold and starvation, to escape from soldiers undershoot-to-kill orders.[8][9] Shot entirely inblack-and-white, the film had a small budget of ₩210 million (US$190,000), part of which was raised throughcrowdfunding.[10] It premiered at the17thBusan International Film Festival in 2012, where it received four prizes: Best Director from the Director's Guild of Korea, the Citizen Reviewers' Award, the CGV Movie Collage Award, and the NETPAC Jury Award.[11] TheNETPAC jury praised it "for focusing on a dramatic historical event in an understated way, with stunning B/W cinematography, depicting the pathos and the psyche of the victims as well as the aggressors."[12]Jiseul won theWorld Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the2013 Sundance Film Festival, the first Korean movie to win that prestigious award.[13][14][15] It also won the Cyclo d'Or at the 19thVesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema and Best Film at the1stWildflower Film Awards.[16][17][18]Jiseul was released in South Korean theaters in 2013, and through positiveword of mouth after the Sundance win, it became the best-selling Koreanindie drama film with 144,602 admissions, as well as the most successful Korean film to be released on less than 100 screens (this record was later broken byHan Gong-ju).[19][20]
O's fifth feature filmGolden Chariot in the Sky (2014) revolved around three brothers who go on a road trip together, with the youngest dreaming of starting a band called "Golden Chariot" with his village friends (played by real-life nine-memberska bandKingston Rudieska). It made its world premiere at the 49thKarlovy Vary International Film Festival and was the opening film of the 10thJecheon International Music & Film Festival.[21][22][23]
O has started pre-production on his next filmThe Legend of a Mermaid, where ahaenyeo (Jeju-based woman diver) meets a former nationalsynchronized swimmer (played byMoon Hee-kyung andJeon Hye-bin, respectively).[24][25] It received aUS$10,000 cash grant from the Asian Cinema Fund in 2014.[26][27]
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