Im Kwon-Taek speaks about 천년학 (千年鶴, Thousand Year Crane)

Interview with Im Kwon-Taek (Downloadable, 8.9mb, Windows Media)

Is there any participant you particularly liked?
Director Im Kwon-Taek: Before starting the audition we had some kind of expectations regarding the look of the kids, but finding someone who would live up to them isn't an easy thing. But when we started, we found quite a few kids who fulfilled our expectations, and today was the same. But we'll have to search more in depth, to find the kind of beauty we're looking for.

What exactly are you looking for?
Im: Well, first off they have to sing [pansori] well. And then of course they have to resemble what Oh Jung-Hae and Kim Young-Min looked like in their childhood. But, most importantly, they should be good actors.

What importance will you give to the child actors in the film?
Im: If you merely look at the amount of scenes they feature in, you could either think it's very brief, or significant. But Song-Hwa and Dong-Ho's [the blind daughter and the son] childhood and their suffering bonds them together emotionally in a way they'll never be able to forget, so we have to convey that part well.

It's your 100th film. You must feel some burden about that.
Im: At first, when they asked me about it, I just thought 'what does it matter if it's my 100th or 101st film?'. But when I started preparing for it, things changed, and little by little a feeling of burden emerged. Now I think I'll have to shoot this even if it's the last film I make in my life.

Why did you choose 'Thousand Year Crane' as the title?
Im: Lee Cheong-Joon wrote three short novels about pansori. One of them is 'Sopyonje', the other 소리의 빛 (The Light of Pansori), and finally 'The Wanderer of Seonhak-Dong.' I used the former two in my film 'Sopyonje', but back then I didn't have enough confidence to do all three. The kind of dreamlike atmosphere 'The Wanderer of Seonhak-Dong' evokes is something which was too hard to represent on screen for me. So I decided to postpone it, and time passed. Now I think I can't postpone it any longer.

Through 'Thousand Year Crane', what kind of story do you want to tell?
Im: It's a story about love. The love of people who have Pansori running through their veins for their entire life. If 'Sopyonje' was a way to quickly convey the interest we have for Pansori, the fact we could see it with our eyes and read it with our minds, with 춘향뎐 (Chunhyang) I wanted to convey life in the Joseon Dynasty through the depths of our Pansori culture. But in 'Thousand Year Crane', Pansori is the sound of people. The sound through which two people continuously express their love for each other. At the end, I wanted to show how love and Pansori become one thing. In a few words, it's a kind of melodrama.

What was the most burdensome thing about the project?
Im: Just the fact people could consider this a follow up to 'Sopyonje', because it features Song-Hwa and Dong-Ho from that film. It might share some elements with 'Sopyonje', but making sure this was a completely different film was the biggest burden for me.

When do you plan to start shooting?
Im: Once we're done with pre-production, we plan to crank in by the end of the month, early December at worst. Shoot should be completed by March.

Via Chosun Ilbo