Some interesting cinema news out of South Korea, where Park Chan-wook, the acclaimed director behind Oldboy and Thirst, recently released his last work, Paranmanjang, a 30-minute short film shot entirely on the Apple iPhone 4: A Novel Way of Using iPhone 4: Filmmaking.Park, who's known for his dark and highly stylized feature films, definitely wasn't the first filmmaker I would have thought of for a project like this. Of course, it helps to have a significant portion of the production costs paid for by wireless carrier KT Corp., the exclusive distributor of iPhone in Korea:
For the short, he teamed up with his younger brother Park Chan-kyong, a media artist, and KT Corp., the wireless operator that is the exclusive distributor of iPhone in South Korea. KT paid for a portion of the $130,000 in production costs.No hammer fights or twisted revenge tales in this one, but the cinematography is reportedly quite good. The film is scheduled to screen at Korean cinemas later this month. And of course, I imagine we'll eventually see it available on iTunes in some form. More here: 'Oldboy' Director Park Chan-wook Shoots New Film Entirely On iPhone 4.
Pyo Hyun-myung, president of KT’s mobile business group, called the movie "the product of the state-of-the-art technology meets art." The company has sold 1.84 million units of iPhone since it became available in the market in November 2009.
The short is a fantastical tale that begins with a middle-aged man fishing one afternoon and then, hours later at night, catches the body of a woman. The panicked man tries to undo the intertwined fishing line, but he gets more and more entangled. He faints, then wakes up to find himself in the white clothes that the woman was wearing. The movie’s point of view then shifts to the woman and it becomes a tale of life and death from a traditional Korean point of view.