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Art Film Distributor Opens Theater

By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter


A poster for a film series by the film distributing company Sponge to be held at its new theater in Seoul
Local film distributing company Sponge, which has been devoted to introducing a variety of art and small-budget movies here, will open a theater in Seoul next year to show its films in a steadier manner.

"It's like a small and not well known restaurant where delicious dishes are served", said Cho Sung-kyu, president of Sponge. "We realized that there are still many people willing to take the trouble to look around for good movies, the same way as trying to find a good restaurant".

After three years' experience in distributing films to local theaters, Cho said that they learned that without spending much money on ads, they could promote their own films if they are good enough but they need to have a stable place to "serve" them.

Sponge has brought such films as "Dogville", "Josee, the Tiger and the Fish" and "Broken Flowers", and many of their films were seen by over 20,000 viewers, which is a high number for arthouse here.

But before its success, Sponge had to overcome budget limitations, which it did through the creation of Cine Hue, a joint venture with the investment firm KTB Network to promote its lineup of several art films together.

In addition, different from the strategy of other big-budget films to distribute them to hundreds of screens, the company has now decided to release its own films over a longer period of time at one or two theaters to lessen the economic risk for theater owners.

"Now as things have improved, we don't have difficulty in finding theaters to show them, but having our own theater will give us more freedom and enable us to set up a long-term plan to offer a variety of programs", Cho added.

The company's new theater Sponge House will use one of the four screens at the Cine Core theater in Chongro, downtown Seoul at its own venue for its films from Jan. 5. Its first film is "On the Road, II", a documentary film about the tour in Europe of local rock group Yoon Band.

To celebrate the opening of the theater, the company will also hold a film festival from Dec. 22 to Jan. 4 at the theater with a collection of 11 popular movies that were distributed by the company along with an upcoming film.

The festival has two parts. From Dec. 22 to Dec. 28, a collection of six films that have been shown this year will be first re-screened under the title of "Cine Hue Season I Epilogue".

The movies showing in the first part include French director Pedro Almodovar's "Bad Education" ;"Blood and Bones", directed by Korean-Japanese director Yoichi Sai, whose Korean name is Choi Yang-il and starring Takeshi Kitano; "Eros", a compilation of short films by Wang Kar Wei, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni; "Vanity Fair", directed by Mira Nair and starring Reese Witherspoon; and "Educator" by German director Hans Weingartner.

From Dec. 29 to Jan. 4, the second part titled "Japanese Love Talk" will show five Japanese films including "Josee, the Tiger and the Fish" by Isshin Inudou; Takashi Minamoto's "Tokyo Tower"; and Takeshi Kitano's "Scene at the Sea" and "Dolls" ; as well as upcoming film "Maison de Himiko" by Inudou.

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