Lee Chang Dong Collection

- Green Fish -

In this South Korean crime drama, Makdong (Han Suk-Kyu) is discharged from the army to find changes in his rural hometown village. Aboard a train, he meets nightclub singer Miae (Shim Hye-Jin), girlfriend of a Seoul gang leader (Moon Sung-Keun). Makdong joins the gang, but his increasing interest in Miae puts him in conflict with the boss. This film won the 1997 Vancouver Film Festival's Dragons and Tigers Award, given to top Asian films.

- Peppermint Candy -

Screenwriter turned director Lee Chang-dong, who scripted the acclaimed A Single Spark, creates this tale of personal evolution and national history. Told backwards, the film opens in the spring of 1999 where a family outing is spoiled by a raggedy old man, Yeong-ho, who threatens to throw himself in front of a train. Rewind to three days earlier, Yeong-ho is seen buying a gun to off himself. Recently ruined by bad stock deals, terrorized by loan sharks, and dumped by his adulterous wife, Yeong-ho is a typical victim of the Asian financial meltdown. He pays his dying ex-girlfriend a visit in the hospital and, though she is unconscious, he gives her the same peppermint candy that she used to send him. Rewind further to the summer of 1994, Yeong-ho hires a detective to tail his philandering wife, though he is involved with a pretty office assistant. Rewind to 1987, which reveals Heong-ho as a thuggish policeman known for dispensing horrific amounts of brutality. This film was a critical favorite at the 1999 Pusan Film Festival.

- Oasis -

Korean director Lee Chang-dong's drama begins on the day that Jong-du (Sol Kyung-gu), a mentally handicapped young man, is released from prison. He is immediately arrested again for being unable to pay a restaurant bill, and his brother bails him out and sets him up with a menial job and a place to live. The crime that originally landed Jong-du in prison was a hit-and-run accident that resulted in the death of an old man. One day he goes to visit the victim's family, and meets Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), the man's daughter, who has cerebral palsy. After a disastrous first meeting, the two begin an unlikely love affair that exposes the callousness and uncomfortable secrets of both of their families.