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Saturday, September 23, 2017

2014 Korean movie Sea Fog (해무) at Carnegie Library in Oakland, October 1.



The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's main branch in Oakland will show the 2014 Korean movie Sea Fog (해무) on October 1 as next month's installment of International Cinema Sunday. A 2014 Variety review provides a summary:
The film takes place in 1998, when the IMF Crisis made life hard for ordinary South Koreans, but the marine setting imbues the action with an elemental, timeless quality. Five fishermen under Capt. Kang Chul-joo (Kim Yoon-seok) set sail from their hometown, Yeosu, but they return empty-handed. The owner of their beat-up old trawler, Junjiho, wants to trade it in, but Kang is more attached to it than to his wife, whom he catches in flagrante with a Chinese-Korean. To save the ship, he decides to smuggle ethnic Koreans from China.

Braving unusually rough weather, they meet the skiff ferrying the stowaways from China. Shim creates an unforgettable scene of frenzied danger as they scramble to leap from one vessel to the other on a pitch-black night, driving home how desperate they are. A young woman, Hong-mae (Han Ye-rin) falls into the sea, and though the crew is ready to abandon her, the youngest deckhand, Dong-sik (Park Yu-chun), dives in to save her, cementing a bond that forms the story’s emotional backbone.
The movie runs from 2:00 to 4:30 pm in Classroom A and is free and open to the public. The library is located at 4400 Forbes Ave. in Oakland (map) and is accessible by buses 28X, 54, 61C, 61D, 67, 69, 71A, 71B, 71C, 71D, and 93.