Legendary K-films return to cinema in UHD version

Attracting more than 11.74 million people to the theater in 2004, “Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War” is ready to come back this March at CGV - the nation's largest cinema chain. Directed by South Korean director Kang Je-gyu, the movie became the second film in the country to exceed the threshold of 10 million moviegoers. Remastering firm Content Zone worked to upgrade the original film to a 4K ultra high definition version (3840×2160). Remastering is the process of improving the picture and sound of original content to reproduce an enhanced version.

Content Zone CEO Jang Ji-wook has full credit for bringing “Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War” back to the theater in 17 years. With the goal of restoring quality South Korean films produced between the 1980s and the early 2000s, Jang has acquired their secondary copyrights and worked on remastering for the past seven years. "Film versions can be remastered in 4K and even 8K. We are getting the 4K ‘Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War’ remastered,” Jang said., ”We hope the return of masterpiece K-films in an upgraded version to bring a new breath to the movie arena hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic where new releases have to wait longer to be premiered.”

Since last year, many film lovers have complained that “Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War” is not available in any way. As film producing firm “Kang Je-gyu Film,” the original owner of the movie's copyright, shut down, a new copyright holder took over it, since which the film has become unavailable in all movie content platforms including IPTV, VOD and OTT. The sign-off between Content Zone and the current copyright holder Big Picture Inc. will make the film available back on cinemas, OTT platform WAVE and IPTV. The owner of Big Picture Inc. is Kang's elder sister.

With “Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War" in the lead, 40-plus K-films are gearing up to come back including "Parrot Cries With Its Body” (1981), “Shall Cuckoo Cry At Night?” (1980) and "Janyeomok” (1984), all of which were produced by Jang Jin-wook who led the Renaissance of the South Korean movie industry in the 1960s. “Shall Cuckoo Cry At Night?” is one of the best classical K-films with nine titles in the Grand Bell Awards including the Best Film, the Best Actor and the Best Actress. Describing a surrogate mother replacing an infertile woman, "Janyeomok” won the Best Film and the Best Director in the Grand Bell Awards. "Parrot Cries With Its Body” gave South Korean actress Jeong Yoon-hee the Baeksang Arts Best Actress Award & the Grand Bell Best Actress Award. "People today may think of three of them as adult movies but the award-winning pieces deserve praise and acclaim for their artistic value,” Content Zone CEO Jang said. “We hope that the millennial generation will enjoy the beauty of the forgotten classical movies once they are remastered.”


Jae-Hee Kim jetti@donga.com