Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival opens

The Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival opened Thursday, featuring the seasonal genres of horror and fantasy.

The 10-day event in the city of Bucheon, on the southwest outskirts of Seoul, presents 251 movies from 25 countries, and marking its 10th anniversary, this year's programming inserted mainstream movies along with genre films to satiate the general film fans, organizers said.

The opening film was "Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater" by young South Korean talent Jeon Gye-soo, who blended a surreal story with musical performances. The gender-bending film feels at the beginning like Jim Sharman's "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," but develops into a story about the changing culture of theaters.

The story revolves around a girl who finds a job in a drab theater while searching for her grandmother who went missing during an outing to watch movies.

For film aficionados of certain genres, the event offers a comprehensive screening of movies by Japan's Ishii Teruo, called the "king of cult" in that country, who made such movies as "Hell," "Screwed" and "Porno Period Drama: Bohachi Bushido," and Jimmy Wang from China, who directed many martial arts movies, including "Golden Swallow" and "The Chinese Boxer."

The festival will pay homage to Shin Sang-ok, a mainstream Korean director who died in April after living a tumultuous life in both South and North Korea. His horror movies, such as "Thousand-Year-Old Fox" and "A Ghost Story of the Joseon Dynasty" are said to have raised the level of Korean horror films.

Horror movies from Italy and New Zealand will also be screened during the festival.

Bucheon, July 13 (Yonhap News)