PIFF and Jinju Lantern Festival
The 13th Annual Pusan International Film Festival is going on right now. It is very exciting. I have been to four films already! Last Friday we went to a double feature at an outdoor theater at Haeundae Beach. It sat about 5000 and the screen was positively massive. That night, the films were “The North Face,” an Austrian film about a 1930s German climbing team, and “The Stone of Destiny” a patriotic Scottish film set in the 1950s. Both were ver
y good. The films have English subtitles across the bottom (like we’re used to) and Korean subtitles going down the right side.
Sunday night Brittany and I had a visitor from a fellow UGA grad, who is a Fulbright scholar teaching in a different city. It was his birthday and he wanted to go to a triple movie showing that started at midnight. The movies included the Japanese film “Nightmare Detective 2,” which was as bad as it sounds, “The Button Man,” a Taiwanese Film, which was pretty good, and a Danish film that we just couldn’t quite stay up for. Oh yeah, and I paid 5000 won, or $5, for both double features. Amazing! I hope to see another one this week.
Also this weekend was a lantern festival in Jinju, which is a 1 ½ hour bus ride west of Busan. The festival celebrates the Korean victory over their Japanese invaders way back in 1592. The lanterns were hung and floated down the river in order to communicate with the troops and with loved ones. The festival included hanging wish lanterns and floating lanterns on the Namgang River. They were lovely by date and stunning by night.
The festival was also like a market, with vendors eveywhere. We could even pay $2 each to dress up in traditional Korean outfits to take pictures! Brittany, Karen and I were quite the hit with the aging Korean men watching! At the fortress, there were many pagodas, where the Koreans lounged for a rest and sometimes a nap. We decided to do the same, and here is the lovely pagoda we found for our nap.
I went to Jinju in a group of 10, some I knew before and some I met there. We got to Jinju and decided to look for a hotel for the night. However, after haggling with an ornery Korean who was trying to cheat us, we got the grand idea to not get a hotel, stay up all night and catch the first bus back to Busan at 5 in the morning! Half of us made it to about 2, whereupon we found a quiet patch of grass and doggie-piled in order to stay warm. The others galavanted about and woke us up for the bus ride home. I took a looong nap that afternoon! It was a grand adventure, to be sure.
See more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/k.a.sheridan01/JinjuLanternFestival#
y good. The films have English subtitles across the bottom (like we’re used to) and Korean subtitles going down the right side.Sunday night Brittany and I had a visitor from a fellow UGA grad, who is a Fulbright scholar teaching in a different city. It was his birthday and he wanted to go to a triple movie showing that started at midnight. The movies included the Japanese film “Nightmare Detective 2,” which was as bad as it sounds, “The Button Man,” a Taiwanese Film, which was pretty good, and a Danish film that we just couldn’t quite stay up for. Oh yeah, and I paid 5000 won, or $5, for both double features. Amazing! I hope to see another one this week.
Also this weekend was a lantern festival in Jinju, which is a 1 ½ hour bus ride west of Busan. The festival celebrates the Korean victory over their Japanese invaders way back in 1592. The lanterns were hung and floated down the river in order to communicate with the troops and with loved ones. The festival included hanging wish lanterns and floating lanterns on the Namgang River. They were lovely by date and stunning by night.
The festival was also like a market, with vendors eveywhere. We could even pay $2 each to dress up in traditional Korean outfits to take pictures! Brittany, Karen and I were quite the hit with the aging Korean men watching! At the fortress, there were many pagodas, where the Koreans lounged for a rest and sometimes a nap. We decided to do the same, and here is the lovely pagoda we found for our nap.
I went to Jinju in a group of 10, some I knew before and some I met there. We got to Jinju and decided to look for a hotel for the night. However, after haggling with an ornery Korean who was trying to cheat us, we got the grand idea to not get a hotel, stay up all night and catch the first bus back to Busan at 5 in the morning! Half of us made it to about 2, whereupon we found a quiet patch of grass and doggie-piled in order to stay warm. The others galavanted about and woke us up for the bus ride home. I took a looong nap that afternoon! It was a grand adventure, to be sure.
See more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/k.a.sheridan01/JinjuLanternFestival#
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