Interview: Francis Lee, Korean Film Festival Australia (KOFFIA)

The 2024 Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) runs this year in Sydney from the 22 – 27 August, followed by a touring program in regional cities around Australia. Our Addy Fong spoke to programmer Francis Lee:

Hi, Francis, lovely to meet you. The Korean Film Festival’s in its 15th year. How long have you been a programmer with the festival? 

I’ve been working for the Korean Film Festival for eight years and I’ve been working as a programmer for three years. I used to work as a program coordinator and festival director and about three years ago I took the role of programmer. 

First thing I noticed in the program is that there’s only 10 films playing in Sydney this year. I was a bit surprised by that, I thought there would be more. Can you speak about that? 

Absolutely. It was quite challenging to narrow it down to just 10 films, we used to have 20 to 24 films every year. We used to have also art house films, independent films, that kind of stuff but now days Sydney Film Festival and other film festivals cover art house and independent films so we’re now be able to focus more on films that suit public tastes. Since we’ve downsized our festival, it’s pretty challenging to have 10 films in this year’s festival. We’ve been running Korean Film Festival in Australia for 15 years and one of the big questions we always face is why we need a film festival when people can easily access Korean films on platforms like Netflix and Disney plus.

After much discussion, we decided to focus on providing a unique experience, on things that you can only get in the cinema setting rather than expanding the number of films or cities we visit. This year, we really honed in on giving our audience something special, such as Q&A sessions with the directors. Initially, we aimed to bring 5 directors for these sessions but due to scheduling conflicts, we have three directors joining us this year. I hope we can invite more directors, probably next year or the year after. Selecting just 10 films was really tough, my main priority were ensuring that the film would be an Australian premiere and it would appeal to public tastes as mentioned before. By focusing on Australian premieres, we offer something exclusive that can’t be seen anywhere else at the time of the festival. 

It’s interesting you talk about Sydney Film Festival because I know from interviewing other festival programmers, many Sydney based film festivals cross promote and collaborate, is this something the Korean Film Festival does as well? 

Yeah, we do cross promotion with the Taiwan Film Festival and Japanese Film Festival. We are all like the Asian film festivals together. 

That’s so fun! [laughs]

Yeah, so the film festival time frame in Sydney is like, Sydney Film Festival starts first in June and it has all different kinds of films from different cultures and nationalities. They start first and then Taiwan Film Festival starts, then Japanese Film Festival starts, then the Korean Film Festival, also French and German festivals too. So it’s becomes more specific to each culture, category, in Sydney now. So I think we are working with the other film festivals in terms of like co-promotion and also creating special events with each other. It’s working really well now. 

That’s really cute. I like how the Sydney based film festivals all come together. Going back to only selecting 10 films for this year’s program, I had a look and the program’s pretty diverse which I guess means that you can appeal to many different audiences. Can you speak about your approach to selecting films?

Ah, to ensure our lineup appeals to the public I started by looking at the box office hits in Korea because it’s actually guaranteed by Koreans. I watch about like 30 to 40 films every year, the top overall films, exclude those that have already been released in Australia, so on average five to ten Korean films are officially released in Australia, before the festival. I exclude those because there’s not Australian premieres. From there I balance the lineup with the mix of genres and themes to finalise our selection. This year for example, while we couldn’t include any historical films due to lack of recent high quality ones, this is my personal opinion not official, we included two G-rated films to welcome parents and kids for this year’s festival.

As I mentioned before, in the past when we had 20 to 24 films in the lineup we included more Art house and independent films, but however I believe Korean cinema is still kind of a niche culture in Australia, much like K-Pop, so we still need to build a closer connection with Australian views so our focus has shifted more towards films that cater to public tastes, so this has been a significant change in my approach during my time as festival programmer. 

KOFFIA website is up and running!
Check the schedules and plan your visit now.
Touring program presented with Alice Springs Town Council, Benalla Rural City Council, City of Burnsidehttps://t.co/WpTyX2z4rY pic.twitter.com/SWAN6gqgPW

— Korean Film Festival in Australia (@KOFFIAFilmFest) July 29, 2024

What kind of audiences usually come to the Festival? Like their ethnicity, ages, and do they mostly speak Korean? I don’t speak Korean, I speak Cantonese, so I was wondering what’s the general makeup of your festival audience?

It really depends on the film, now days K-pop idols are actually acting in movies and k-drama as well so when the cast has some K-pop idols, we have lots of teenagers or early 20s, female film fans coming to the cinema. For historical films more elderly people than younger generations but in general I think between 20 to 30s age range, and female audiences are dominant compared to other ages and genders. By ethnicity of course we have a lots of Asians but I can’t specify nationality because you know I can’t ask the nationality of everyone.

Yeah, of course, that would be awkward [laughs]

Yeah. So in general it’s probably like 60% of audience are Asians but 40% Caucasian and also Hispanic, European. Over the years as we’ve run this festival, I’ve seen the balance of ethnicity to almost equal 50% Asian and 50% of any other other ethnicity. So I would say for our film festival goal to introduce Korean film to Australian audiences is like is half achieved, having many different people coming to watch Korean movies so we’re getting there. 

I guess that’s the purpose of the festival, being associated with the Korean Cultural Centre, to showcase Korean culture on screen right? Are you in the Cultural Centre right now?

Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Last month I visited the Korean Cultural Centre for the first time, I never knew this place existed. It’s a cool venue and so close to Event Cinemas George St. I’m curious, was the Cultural Centre somewhere else before? 

We opened in like 2011, Korean Cultural Centre is all over the world. As a government organisation we have 38 branches in places such as New York, France, England, Middle East, South America, North America and Europe, everywhere. So we are one of them covering Australia so we’re doing lots of Korean cultural events all over Australia. We’re doing our best and the Korean Film Festival is one of the major events we are running. You should stop by. We normally have lots of exhibitions going on like every two months we change new exhibitions. 

Yeah, I saw the knotting one, that was really fun. Just kind of went in there with my dad, I was like ‘What is this place? It’s so cool.’ I really love the library.

Next time you should call me out and say hi.

We asked the security guard, oh can we come in? But yes, definitely, I’d love to catch up. That would be fun. 

Yeah, definitely. We’re open to everyone. 

Let’s talk about the festival’s newly introduced free screening program in regional areas, I think it’s so cool. 

When we launched KOFFIA, Korean Film Festival in Australia in 2010, our mission was to introduce Korean film to Australia. All this with the global success of Korean films such Parasite and Decision to Leave, we’ve seen Australian audiences become more aware and interested in Korean cinema. That said however, I still believe Korean cinema is somewhat of a niche culture here. While our initial goal has been met with as I said like 5 to 10 Korean films being officially released in the major cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth each year, there are still many cities and towns where Korean film hasn’t been seen. Many people haven’t experienced them I believe and that’s what’s inspired the new mission of the year, so let’s make sure everyone in Australia has the chance to watch Korean film at least once in their life.

Given the size of Australia, it’s challenging to physically bring Korean films to every corner of the country so we reached out to local councils for support, sending emails to every single one. We were fortunate to receive positive responses and three councils, Benalla Regional Council, City of Burnside, and Alice Springs Town Council met our requirements. These councils will screen four films from our lineup for free for their local residents. This is a great way to bring Korean cinema to more people and I hope that over the years more councils will join us in this effort allowing Korean films to be screened in even more places across Australia. 

I’m really interested to see how it turns out, because I feel like the film preferences of people in regional Australia might be different. Also often when something new happens people might be hesitant but overall this is really cool.

Yeah. So how we approached this is we sent emails to all of the councils in Australia and they actually sent back lots of responses, the only condition we asked is if the council owns a cinema which has got a DCP, digital cinema package, installed. 

Oh, some councils, cinemas don’t have DCPs?

Yeah, that’s the problem and that’s why lots of councils dropped out. Fortunately, we have a three councils involved, we said we’d like to run this film in cooperation with the council can you please screen this film for free and they accepted it. Some managers at the council said they actually love Korean K-drama or Korean films. ‘I’ve seen like Netflix and Disney plus. I love the Korean contents, why not? We should try it. Probably people in my area would like it.’ Some managers they have no idea what Korean K-drama or Korean movie is, ‘Let’s just give a shot and we’ll see how it goes’ Even that support means a lot to us. This is a first trail of the free touring program, we will see how it goes, even if a few people like it, we’re willing to continue it. I’m still waiting for more responses from other councils as well to participate from next year, probably year after, so we can expand on our number of touring cities. 

Are you going to the places? 

No, but it’s kind of like win win strategy. So we are a government organisation and then we have a budget limitation so we don’t have enough cost to travel all around so we ask councils to run it but we’ve made all the promotional material, branding, ticket links, sales all go through our website, and promotional materials such as posters and banners we produce everything and ship them off, and then they receive it and then also like the screening fee is covered by Korean Film Festival, so they don’t spend anything if they own the cinema under the Council’s management. 

Yeah, that would cost a lot. There were a few of films playing regionally that are also festival guests coming from Korea to Sydney. I thought that would be so expensive to take them all on regional tour.

No, no, no, the Q&A session is happening in Sydney only. So the proper sized festival is going on in Sydney only and then also rest of cities is like a simple screening as a touring program.

It’s interesting you talk about guests because I reached out to Original Spin about interviewing one of the filmmakers, but I don’t speak Korean, so it was difficult to arrange. I was wondering if there’s any kind of difficulties in like nuances of translation with audiences that don’t speak Korean, in film subtitling?

Do you remember when director Bong Joon-Ho won the Golden Globe for Parasite? He famously said in his speech, ‘Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.’ 

So like we Koreans, you’re Cantonese so you probably understand, when Hong Kong film was so famous in the 80s and 90s, I was a big fan of Hong Kong film and while we had the option of watching Hong Kong and Hollywood films in 1980s, 1990s in South Korea, we had the option of watching dubbed films most Koreans prefer subtitles because dubbing often disrupted the atmosphere of the entire film, you know, so we’ve been reading subtitles for a long, long time and it doesn’t affect our enjoyment at all. As I’m Korean but I understand that some Australian audiences might still be hesitant about reading subtitles during Korean films. But with the rise of platforms like Netflix and Disney plus, so much content is subtitled I think people are becoming more accustomed to it. I’m not too worried about the audiences missing out on any dialogue or context due to subtitles. The one thing I’m wonder about is whether some of the more subtle moments like certain jokes, moments of sadness over cultural nuances, might not fully translate because it’s like a cultural thing. These feelings might resonate more deeply with the Koreans because of our shared cultural background but even so, these subtitles don’t take away from the overall experience of the film, so I’m confident that Australian audiences will still enjoy and understand the films. 

Tell me about yourself, you’ve been with the festival for 8 years now? What got you into the journey of programming? Did you say you directed the festival for a bit?

Yeah, I’ve been director one year and it was not my job. I’m really bad at like overseeing everything. I much prefer to work on only one specific thing, so I asked my coworker to take the director’s role and he took it. I studied Media at UNSW and graduated in 2013 with a dream of becoming a documentary film director. 

Media production or media theory? Sorry I just… 

Media production, it was Screen and Sound.

I did that too! I did Media Production at UNSW!

Yeah. So my course Screen and Sound was extincted from I think from 2014 or 15 and then it reborn. 

On my goodness, this isn’t part of the interview but we might have been at UNSW at the same time doing almost the same degree.

I studied my course from 2011. 

Same.  

Really?! So media production, did you do Screen and Sound?

Yeah, yeah, the Media Production stream.

Francis and I are in shocked by our shared history and bond over this during the interview. He tells me he started his Media degree at UNSW in his late 20s, having come to Australia from Korea to study. 

Screen and Sound as in film making?

Yeah, we did like a short film project and documentary project and that kind of thing. 

Oh, my gosh. We might have been in the same cohort, but it’s huge. 

[laughs] So my minor was film studies and one of my professors was Greg, Gregory?

I don’t remember but his name keeps coming up, he might have taught me one subject but the course I did was very general like animation, festivals, my academics were mainly Brigid and Alyssa but we could have shared subjects. I was very base level and pretty shy back then.

I’ll mention too cause I was really bad 

Me too! I just got like passes during my degree 

I remember creating like a stick man running and jumping, it was so bad. [laughs]

I’m like how have did we, both getting passes during our uni degree, make it? You’re now working for KOFFIA and I’m interviewing you today. That’s crazy, that’s so cool [laughs] let’s definitely keep in touch!

Yes please. 

Last question, are there any films in the festival you would recommend, what’s your favourite?

I watched the Australian film called Last Cab to Darwin this film made me rethink my life and what truly matters. I consider it a masterpiece of Australian cinema. Because of that I’d highly recommend watching Picnic which is our closing night film. At first glance, it might seem like an ordinary story about elderly people, their sense of life like family, friendship, the journey of living and facing the end of life but if you watch closely you’ll feel what the director is trying to convey. For anyone searching for meaning in their lives Picnic might offer some insight whether it’s the right answer or not so please come and watch Picnic and join the director’s Q&A after. 

Do you have any book recommendations in the Korean Cultural Centre library? English ones cause I can’t read Korean.

There are lots of books written in English, some books about Korean directors published by Korean film council. These books dive into how different Korean directors approach their work, their creative process and their future plans. You’ll find books on renowned directors like Bong Joon-Ho who won best director at the academy award, and Park Chan-Wook who took home best director in Cannes, the books offer insight into minds behind the most iconic films in Korean cinema. Director and story wise there’s a lot of books but Korean cinema in general I recommend you just watch Korean films to understand Korean cinema.

Yeah, so just immerse yourself in watching films. Thanks so much for your time, I love how we awkwardly discovered we might have studied the same course. I can’t write well academically, I never thought I could, so I kinda struggled with uni back then like feeling I wasn’t good enough.

It was so hard, I’m not an English speaker so it took me 3 weeks to a month to finish my essays about the film studies, it was so hard. For local students they’d finish in two days but for me it took at least a month to finish it but I was happy to get a credit. 

The 2024 Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) runs this year in Sydney from the 22 – 27 August, followed by a touring program in regional cities around Australia. For more info head to: https://koffia.com.au/.

Interview by Addy Fong.