spying cam

Winner of the Fipresci Award at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival, [Spying Cam] once again demonstrates the incredible dynamism of contemporary independent Korean cinema. A DV feature that consists primarily of two characters in a room, it is also one of the most ambitious and original films of the year.
In a sweltering, bare hotel room, two men are cooped up, waiting for instructions to come via a mobile phone. With nothing to do, but no place to go, they occupy themselves with their few possessions - a video camera and a copy of Dostoyevsky's [Crime and Punishment]. They begin to play out a series of strange, transcendent re-creations of key scenes from the book, with the help of a bit-player from down the hall. The staged scenes form a backdrop to an unfolding drama that leads far beyond the narrow confines of their room.
Ingeniously echoing the book's themes of guilt and moral responsibility, [Spying Cam] is a masterpiece of originality, driven by two of the strongest acting performances in recent cinema.
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D/P/S/WS Whang Cheol-Mean L Korean w/English subtitles TD 35mm/ col/2004/100mins
Whang Cheol-Mean was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1960. His films include [The Last Train] (1993), [Rita] (1995).