Born in 1936, Im Kwon-taek is often considered the father of Korean cinema and his work is considered a national treasure of South Korea. The son of partisans (which cost him social discrimination at the time of the division of the country due to rising anti-communism) he entered Chungmuro (Korean Hollywood) at a very young age to wade like a living. He made his first film, Farewell to the Duman River, in 1962. After directing dozens of commercial films, it was only in the seventies that he matured a personal turning point, marked by the desire to tell and preserve Korean national history and culture through cinema. The mature phase of Im's work began with masterpieces such as The Genealogy (1978) and Mandala (1981). Since the 1980s, her films have been invited to compete in Berlin (Gilsoddeum, 1986) and Venice (Ssibaji, 1987, Best Actress Award to Kang so-yeong). In 1993, Seopyonje, a poignant celebration of the traditional performance art of the pansori, became Korea's biggest hit ever. In 2000, thanks to Chunhyang, Im became the first Korean director invited to compete at the Cannes Film Festival; two years later, again at Cannes, Im won the award for best director with Chihwaseon. He completes his hundredth film, Beyond the Years, a sort of sequel to Seopyonje (the first Korean film to attract more than a million spectators in Seoul alone). Now Im Kwon-taek is preparing to bestow a whole new aesthetic with his 12nd film Revivre.
