ICL Goes "Home"

5.2.06 Greetings from Jeonju! ICL finally had its premiere last night in Korea, the country where it was shot. Eunhee and I were joined by castmembers Yongkun Bae, Yumi Jung and Soyun Jang, and Youngmin Choi (our DP) and Jung-sik Park (our AC). I wish I could tell you all what happened in the Q&A, but I don't speak Korean! So, all I could do was just smile and nod, pretty much. Thanks also to Eunhee's family, who were in attendance and gave us great support.

The experience here at the Jeonju International Film Festival has been great - the volunteers are mostly college kids who are so spirited and cute, with organized cheers and everything. Also, the audiences have been great - Eunhee and the cast got quite a few autograph requests! I'm planning to see a lot of films by other filmmakers in the coming days...

After the premiere, the ICL gang went out for drinks and food. It was great for me to get to know the actors and camera dept guys, who I had not met before since I had not yet joined the project at the time of the shoot. It was great to actually get to know the people who felt like my friends already from watching ICL so much during the cutting and post-production of the film. And I'm glad to say, everyone welcomed me to the ICL family so warmly - it's made my experience of working on ICL that much more complete. Surprisingly, all of the actors' personalities are pretty different from their characters in the film. Just shows how good they are at acting!

5.5.06 We had a very successful second screening here. Yumi Jung came back for the second screening Q&A, and our 2nd AD, Bo-kyoung Lee also attended. Also, our friends Steven Nam and Eunjin Bang, producer and director of "Princess Aurora", came to support us, and we all got food together after. All in all, it's been a very fun week. We made some great new friends here and saw great films, spent the evenings having drinks with other filmmakers and getting to know them, and one of those nights we stayed up with some of the festival staff and some of our crew, and partied until morning. I gotta hand it to them, Koreans really know how to party. The camaraderie is great, and I've really come to admire so many aspects of Korean culture. The closing awards ceremony was quite an elaborate affair - we got to walk the red carpet and watch the fans go crazy over movie stars in attendance.

5.8.06 I had such a great time in Seoul this last weekend. We went to great restaurants, saw Soyun perform in a play called "New Boeing Boeing", went clubbing, hit a wine bar, etc. Thanks to E, Jang-wook and Soyun for hanging with me all night before my flight! It's been an amazing few weeks. I'm really gonna miss my friends here but I've had such an unforgettable time, so I'm sure I'll be back!