Born in 1952, JANG started his career as a television screenwriter. He made his feature film debut as co-director of 1986 <Seoul Jesus>, a tale imagining Jesus descent into modern-day Seoul. While studying anthropology at Seoul National University in the late 1970s, JANG was active in the cultural protest movement against the South Korean military government. In 1980, he was jailed for having distributed leaflets exposing the Kwangju massacre. JANG has said that during ...More

Born in 1952, JANG started his career as a television screenwriter. He made his feature film debut as co-director of 1986 <Seoul Jesus>, a tale imagining Jesus descent into modern-day Seoul. While studying anthropology at Seoul National University in the late 1970s, JANG was active in the cultural protest movement against the South Korean military government. In 1980, he was jailed for having distributed leaflets exposing the Kwangju massacre. JANG has said that during his several-day jail stay he realized that he could use film to make social commentary. Fifteen years after the bloodshed of Kwangju, he wrote and directed <A Petal>, re-enacting scenes of one of the uprising major demonstrations. JANG's films have received every major award in his native country, as well as several international prizes. The originality and daring of JANG Sun-woo was honored with a full retrospective at the 1997 Rotterdam Film Festival.
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