Exhibition shows how movie posters have changed

Not many would be aware that filmmaker Lee Jun-ik, best known for his 2005 period drama “The King and the Clown,” used to be a copywriter and made movie posters, before making his foray into filmmaking.

From the 80s to the 90s, Lee created some 1,000 promotional posters for films. One of them was for director Jeong Ji-young’s 1990 drama “North Korean Partisan in South Korea.” Making posters used to be a lot more complicated than it is now; it required cutting and gluing using scissors and paper.

Korean Film Archive’s current exhibition is featuring Korea’s movie posters from the 80s and the 90s as well as the ones used in contemporary cinema. Filmmaker Lee participated in this exhibition by re-creating a poster for Jeong Ji-young’s 1990 movie. He made the poster the old way, without using the latest computer technologies. 

“He cut out the pictures of each actor, and glued them onto a piece of paper,” said Min Byeong-hyeon from Korean Film Archive. “The newly created poster looks exactly like the one that was created back in 1990.”

A video clip of Lee re-creating the poster for the 1990 movie is also being screened at the exhibition. The show also offers an opportunity for the visitors to see how posters were made before there were computer programs.

The show also features the works of late film producer Jeong Seung-hye, who died of cancer in 2009. She was a long-time friend of filmmaker Lee Jun-ik, and she worked with him for their 2005 movie “The King and the Clown” as its producer.

Jeong was also a prominent designer and copywriter for film posters and promotional images. A number of her famous works, including posters of Park Chan-wook’s 2005 thriller “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance,” Lee Jun-ik’s 2006 drama “Radio Star,” and Yoo Ha’s 2002 romance “Marriage is a Crazy Thing” are on display.

Along with the posters from the 80s and the 90s, the show also displays a number of contemporary movie posters. About 20 original sketches by designers Choi Ji-woong and Park Dong-woo, whose works include the posters of Kim Ki-duk’s “Pieta” and Jeong Ji-woo’s “Eungyo,” will be on display.

The show also includes an English-language poster of director Kim Ji-woon’s 2008 Western film,“The Good, the Bad, the Weird,” which was also released in the U.S. in the same year.

The exhibition runs until April 28 at Korean Film Archive in Sangam-dong, Seoul. Admission is free. For more information, call (02) 3153-2031.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)