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Stephen McCarty

Who knew school could be this much fun?
“I start with crime films, like Akira Kurosawa’s, then Johnnie To’s and the way similar themes are picked up at different moments in history; and how directors play with generic conventions.
“I have a section on family drama, which is big in East Asia and a very important genre. I also have animation; and I end with zombies and monsters. Godzilla!”
Professor Choi Jinhee, head of film studies at King’s College, University of London, is describing her course. The curriculum promises an “understanding of film and moving-image media, the societies that produce them […] and the attitudes and debates they give rise to”; and frankly, there are far crustier degree courses out there.

Screenings of popular films from South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, combined with a programme that offers “a solid foundation for careers in the film industry”, might sound like an unimpeachable choice for one’s college days. But a more serious academic spine runs through the professor’s agenda, one that wouldn’t occur to the rest of us in our movie-watching.
Seoul native Choi, 13 years at King’s and a former visiting professor in East Asian studies and film studies at Yale University, in the US, is awaiting publication of her latest book, a monograph titled Forever Girls: Necro-Cinematics and South Korean Girlhood, which investigates “girlhood as a sensibility”, she explains by Zoom from her London home. “In South Korea, girlishness is still permissible, regardless of your age, so I was interested in that [in writing the book].”
Girlishness as portrayed on film or in society generally?
“In the former sense,” says Choi. “Certain aesthetic preferences, pensiveness, sentimentalism, gestures. In Lee Chang-dong’s film Poetry [2010], the female protagonist, who ‘likes flowers and says odd things’ describes herself as somewhat girlie.

“The latter sense is also partly true: my mother, who is in her 80s, behaves in a girlish manner, which is why I dedicated this book to her, because she is, to me, forever a girl. But I was also [concerned with] labour history relating to girls and young people from the country moving to Seoul and working in factories. I was making a historical connection in terms of girlhood, labour and those films where girls die – what is the cinematic logic there?”
A film “starting with the death of a girl, or ending with one – sometimes that’s a trigger for developing a plot, sometimes it’s an outcome to reveal deplorable working conditions”, she says.
“[The concept] is fluid, that’s why it’s not ‘girls’, but ‘girlhood’, which can be embodied by different demographics – and that’s why body-switch films are interesting,” she explains. “If grannies can go back to their 20s and the girlhood they never had is something they can enjoy when a switch happens – I find that kind of device interesting.”
Choi is referring to, among other films, the “hugely popular” Miss Granny, a 2014 Korean comedy-drama directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, in which a mysterious photographic studio becomes a portal to reclaimed youth. Chinese-Taiwanese-Korean remake 20 Once Again, starring Yang Zishan, followed only a year later.

Hwang, meanwhile, went on to create Netflix series Squid Game (2021). “I had to watch it,” says Choi, “because students kept asking me if I’d seen it. I said, ‘Squid what?’ I found it interesting, but the gender representation I wasn’t particularly fond of: the girl from North Korea died perfunctorily to set the stage for two male rivals.
“I like films better than series because series take a lot longer to watch. Ten episodes are fine, but 16? And seasons?”
When Choi introduced a special showing of the 2015 Korean mystery thriller The Priests at London’s Curzon Soho cinema, “It was sold out!
“They loved the exorcism in the middle of Seoul,” she recalls. “When the protagonist runs down the steps to throw a possessed pig into the Han River he takes a cab – and he should – to reach one of the bridges.”
That attention to location detail is not random – and suggests a modicum of homesickness in a scholar who left her hometown about 30 years ago to move to the US, then Canada, then Britain. It is no surprise that the topic of urban space is addressed on her course.
“In [2016 action-horror film] Train to Busan, for example, I like to see the history of Seoul Station and how transport has changed – how that station, established in the colonial era, has become a museum,” she says. “And in [2013 spy film] The Suspect there’s a great car chase in some of the areas I’m familiar with; I like to see the urban spatial traces.”
The enthusiasm is reciprocated. “The students love the films, but it is not purely for entertainment. They also want to learn some of the sociopolitical histories of the [countries represented],” she says.
And prospective undergraduates please note: popcorn is not handed out at lectures.


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Asian cinema

Professor of film studies Choi Jinhee on her use of films by Kurosawa and Johnnie To – and Godzilla

The movie Miss Granny 
uses the body-switch plot device. 
Photos: Handout

Professor Jinhee Choi, head of film studies at King’s College, University of London. Photo: Jinhee Choi

In Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry, the protagonist identifies as ‘somewhat girlie’. Photo: Handout

The Suspect is a South Korean spy film. Photo: Deltamac

Cantopop star Frances Yip revisits her work with James Wong Jim and Joseph Koo Ka-fai that put Hong Kong’s music on the map

Singer Frances Yip today, at the “Soundtrack of Our Lives” exhibition that traces the importance of her collaboration with songwriters James Wong and Joseph Woo in the rise of Cantopop. Photo: Abdela Igmirien

Frances Yip in 1968, when she was an auxiliary police officer. Photo: Handout

Frances Yip performs at the Diamond Jubilee Ball held by the Scout Association of Hong Kong in 1986. Photo: Handout

Frances Yip in 1979. Picture: SCMP

Joseph Koo (left) and James Wong perform in 1998. Photo: Joseph Koo family collection, Vancouver

Joseph Koo, Frances Yip and James Wong (right) pose before their concert in 1998. Photo: Handout

A painting by Joseph Koo of him and James Wong on display at the “A Laugh at the World: James Wong” exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, in Sha Tin. Photo: Eugene Lee

A cha chaan teng reimagined at the “Soundtrack of Our Lives: Joseph Koo x the Rise of Cantopop” exhibition. Photo: Tai Kwun

This cinema plays The Rocky Horror Picture Show – all the time: why you should visit Munich’s Museum Lichtspiele

Museum Lichtspiele in Munich, decorated in homage to the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Photo: Stephen McCarty

The cover of The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack vinyl record. Photo: Stephen McCarty

Munich’s Museum Lichtspiele first opened its doors in 1910. Photo: Stephen McCarty

Her debut feature was a film festival darling. Mongolian director uses money from Macau win to make short film about home

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir on the red carpet at the 20th Marrakech International Film Festival in Morocco. Photo: Getty Images

Shaman Ze (Tergel Bold-Erdene) in City Of Wind, directed by Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir. As one of eight directors chosen to receive US$38,400 each at a recent film camp in Macau, the Portugal-based Mongolian director is returning home to make a short film.

Shaman Ze (Tergel Bold-Erdene) in City Of Wind, directed by Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, which won two awards at the 2023 Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and was Mongolia’s pick for the 2024 Oscars.

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir on the red carpet at the 20th Marrakech International Film Festival in November 2023, where her film City of Wind was screened. Photo: Getty Images

Shaman Ze (Tergel Bold-Erdene) in City Of Wind, directed by Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir.

When a bomb exploded in a Hong Kong cinema, injuring 11 and sending 400 stampeding out of the building

The Hoover Theatre in Causeway Bay, where a bomb went off in 1974. 

A bomb exploded during a showing of a police satire in the Hoover Theatre in Causeway Bay in 1974, injuring 11 and sending 400 audience members stampeding for the exits. Photo: SCMP

The explosion happened in the Hoover Theatre in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Photo: SCMPost

Crowds gather outside the Hoover Theatre after a bomb exploded under a seat in the left front stalls while the film Supremo was being screened. The blast injured 11 people and sent more than 400 stampeding out of the building. Photo: SCMP

So you want to make a movie? Hong Kong director Roger Garcia is helping young filmmakers from all over Asia find their feet

Roger Garcia is helping the next generation of Asian filmmakers find their feet. Photo: courtesy of Roger Garcia

Hong Kong director Roger Garcia reflects on film festivals in Europe and Greater China, and how he is helping the next generation of gifted Asian filmmakers find their feet. Photo: courtesy of Roger Garcia

Anandi Bhattacharya in The Once and Future world premiere at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts in 2022. Photo: Roger Garcia

From The Once and Future world premiere at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts. Photo: Roger Garcia

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Film & TV

Choi, formerly a visiting professor at Yale, has a new book out soon titled ‘Forever Girls: Necro-Cinematics and South Korean Girlhood’ about body-switch films and girlishness


Professor of film studies at King’s College, London, Choi has created a course that uses the films as a gateway to explore the societies that produced them
