200 Pound BeautyAmong the anticipated feature films are the North American Premieres of 200-POUND BEAUTY, a Cinderella comedy that pokes fun at the idealization of beauty; BETWEEN, a documentary portrait of a paralyzed woman's desperate attempts to cure her illness by traditional methods represented by a shaman; HERB, a quirky romance between a mentally challenged young man and the young beauty he is fixated with; LIKE A VIRGIN, a crowd pleaser about a young man's odyssey to change his gender in his adoration of all things Madonna; ONCE IN A SUMMER, a nostalgic tale of young army recruits on the tense border between North and South Korea in the summer of 1969; OUR SCHOOL, a documentary that profiles the hundreds of thousands of native Koreans who have been living in Japan (as second class citizens); and UNSTOPPABLE MARRIAGE, a dramatic comedy about two star-crossed lovers and the chaos that engulfs their rivaling families when the two become engaged.

Whispering CorridorsThe South Korean film renaissance has been largely built on the expert horror and ghost story elements perfected by Korean directors. To salute these works, the Festival is presenting Korean Horror Days on August 28 and 29, presented by Tartan Asia Extreme. Among the most promising of these macabre midnight movies is CELLO,  a revenge story of a young girl's response ot the massacre of her entire family; THE GHOST, an eerie gothic tale of a haunted house and the psychotic mother and daughter who inhabit it; PHONE, a supernatural tale that links a cel phone with the world of the dead; RED SHOES, a nightmarish inversion of THE WIZARD OF OZ, where a young woman's discovery of an abandoned pair of shoes leads to madness and murder; A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, a maddeningly perverse take on the Cinderella story, featuring a cruel stepmother, her two wicked stepdaughters and an innocent who is aided by the ghost of her long dead mother; and WHISPERING CORRIDORS, the tale of high school students dealing with forces of evil.

ChunyuangOn a totally different note (and embracing the different genres of the South Korean film movement), the BAM Rose Cinemas will present a four-film retrospective of the career of director Im Kwon-Taek. Beginning as a production assistant in the 1950s, Im has been influenced by both traditional Korean storytelling and films from the West. After working in the low budget exploitation industry (the only thriving film industry of the 1960s and 1970s), he changed course with the film MANDALA (1981), a contemplate journey that followed two Buddhist monks sturggling with their beliefs. The film became an arthouse hit. Sine then, his work has been seen at major film festivals around the world and he has been lauded as one of Asia's elder statesmen. The mini-retro includes such films as COME COME COME UPWARD (1989), following the fascinating journey of a Buddhist nun who becomes involved with a suicidal drunk whose life she saves; GENERAL'S SON (1990), a gangster tale that pits a young street tough against Japanese gangsters; FESTIVAL (1996), a tense family drama that revolves around the return of a famous novelist to his native village; and CHUNHYANG (2000), the director's celebrated tale of a common courtesan married to the son of an influential government official.

There is a lot to explore and appreciate in this wide-ranging film event. For more information, log on to the Festival website: www.koreanfilmfestival.org