Hard Light Cinema

happy friday cinephiles!! 💃

We are pleased as punch to announce our latest series at RPL, POSSIBLE LOVES: TWO BY LEE CHANG-DONG 🪩

Lee Chang-dong, while not quite as celebrated as the populist Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook here in America, is one of the leading figures in Korean cinema. In preparation for his new film, Possible Love, playing the festival circuit before being released on Netflix in November, Hard Light is giving his films a deserved chance at the big screen in 2026 with a brief partial retrospective of his career through this series.

To those unfamiliar with Lee Chang-dong, I should warn you the title of the series is, in addition to being a nod to his new film, somewhat ironic because his films often deal heavily with alienation and complicated antiheroes as central characters. His career started as a writer of concise novels and short-stories before moving to the screen in the late 90s with Green Fish, a story about a young man’s descent into crime. Lee Chang-dong, like his American counterpart in Sean Baker, tackles characters who often are difficult to watch or on the fringes of society as they deal with grief, trauma, disability, desperation, and loneliness, which can cause regrettable actions in his stories.

While this series tackles one of Lee Chang-dong’s earliest films and his most recent, I (Warner) encourage you to do some additional “homework” to tackle the 4 films we aren’t featuring here: Green Fish, Oasis, Poetry, and Secret Sunshine. All of these movies are available using Richmond Public Library resources like Kanopy and Hoopla, and some of them are among my personal best movies of the decade.

— Warner West, Hard Light Cinema

Peppermint Candy (2000)

Here in Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang-dong uses a Memento-like structure to flip the story by beginning at the ending and rolling backwards through key moments in South Korea’s history to understand how we reached this moment on both a personal and national level. While the titular peppermint candy may not have the exact same purpose as a Proustian madeleine, it similarly recalls sense memory and recalls the loss and loves of youth. A spiritual cousin to A Taxi Driver and Joint Security Area, Peppermint Candy tries to find the beauty in a broken country and a path through fascism.

— Warner West, Hard Light Cinema

Burning (2018)

Burning, the film that Lee Chang-dong is perhaps best known for, fits nicely into our October programming alongside De Palma’s Blow Out (free screening October 22 at UR!) as a loose series of Hitchcock homages and stealth-horror films. Adapted from a Haruki Murakami short story, Burning blends art and anxiety in a murder mystery that is hesitant to provide answers. In a year where movie-goers love to see obsession on the big screen, join us for this tale of sexual desire, loneliness, perversity, and catharsis from a modern master.

— Warner West, Hard Light Cinema