Insight in the garden of good and evil
He's been called the Quentin Tarantino of South Korean cinema, and Kim Ki-duk is certainly one of the country's most controversial directors. His recurring themes are violence, sexual perversity and controversial treatment of women. Little wonder he's typically branded an 'angry young man'.
With the release of his more transcendental and contemplative work Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring last year - a film that explores the lives of an old monk and his young protege - many thought Kim had shifted his focus from portraying the brutality of human behaviour.
Then came the controversial Samaritan Girl, which won Kim a Silver Bear award for best director at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.
The film - which is screening, with Spring Summer ... and The Coast Guard, as part of the Director in Focus series at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival - explores forgiveness and reconciliation, sin and salvation, as a high school prostitute, Yeo-jin, tries to create nirvana in her brothel bed by converting her clients to Buddhism. It all takes a tragic turn when her father seeks revenge for her sexual exploitation.
The Coast Guard (2002) is drawn from Kim's experiences in the marines. It opens with a young recruit suffering from the effects of an accidental shooting, after he mistakes a man for a North Korean spy
'My films are not abruptly different from each other,' says the 43-year-old director. 'They all probe into questions of the human psyche in various ways or forms.
'Just like one has different 'rooms' in your own mind, each film is drawn from different compartments in a 'directory' in my mind.
'For me, film is created out of a point where reality and fantasy meet. And my movies try to access the borderline where the painfully real and the hopefully imaginative meet.'
Kim had no formal training in filmmaking. He was born in a rural village in South Korea, and moved to Seoul at the age of nine. He dropped out of high school, then had a five-year stint in the army - where he developed a passion for painting. He later studied fine arts in Paris and made a living selling his paintings on the streets.
Kim says there is a common thread between his films: an attempt to defy the notion that human nature is either innately good or evil. 'I am against any attempt to categorise human nature,' he says.
'My films are not about the wisdom of life. Life is full of errors and trials. But I did want to depict a life led to the ultimate wisdom, to show how the happiness and ugliness of life co-exist.'
