Oki’s Movie + Tale of Cinema

6:30 Oki’s Movie (80m)
Toggling between the present and the past, reality and fiction, this deeply felt work from Hong recounts the amorous and artistic adventures of a talented young director, his middle-aged cinema instructor, and the woman (the titular Oki) who loves them both. A pivotal film for Hong, Oki’s Movie realizes a shift in his work toward emphasizing and exploring a female point of view—a movement that culminates in the film’s fourth and final segment, in which we finally see Oki’s movie, which dramatizes her relationships with both men.

8:00 Tale of Cinema (89m) | 35mm
A bifurcated tale of what cinema can do to those in its thrall, Hong’s sixth feature is composed of two halves: in the first, a young man encounters a woman he used to know, and after a drunken night of abortive sex, the two make a double-suicide pact; in the second, a slightly older man seemingly has an extremely similar experience, as it becomes apparent that the first half was in fact a film-within-the-film whose male lead appears to be based upon him. A key work in the first phase of Hong’s career, Tale of Cinema is something like a Rosetta Stone for his subsequent twice-told tales.