Kim Ki-duk achieved a cult status in Kerala

Kochi: To understand how deeply the film buffs in the state loved

South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk

, known for his unsettling art-house movies with graphically violent and deeply sexualized imageries, one needs to log on to YouTube and watch a 30-minute short directed by a bunch of youngsters from the interiors of Idukki.

The film titled ‘

Dear Kim Ki-duk

’, directed by

Binukumar

, shows three youngsters of Nedunkandam, who dream about procuring his films and making their own, even as they shovel away cow dung from a ditch. In the end, the trio seeks the help of a net cafe owner to send an email to duk, paying Rs 60, in the hope that the filmmaker would send them his films, but gets duped in the process.

Kim Ki-duk, who died of Covid-19 related complications in Latvia, may have never watched the film but he did send out a missive to flood-hit Kerala in September 2018, expressing his solidarity and appealing against the move to cancel the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). The hand-scribbled note in Korean was posted on the Facebook by filmmaker Bijukumar Damodaran, who had met him at Almaty film festival in Khazhakstan.

The filmmaker, who had a cult following in Kerala till allegations of sexual abuse took away the sheen in 2017, arrived as a chief guest for the IFFK in 2013 and was taken aback by the mobbing fans.

“His films had a straight narrative. There was no intellectual pretense but the visual imagery was strong,” said Dr Biju. Many in the state who were hooked by his 2003 film ‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring’ found later films too morbid. “I watched the film Human, Space, Time and Human along with him at a film festival and did not like it,” added Dr Biju.

Critic C S Venkiteswaran said there is total moral darkness in his works. “The film Bad Guy is unbelievably dark. There is no redemption at all. There is an obsession with morbid violence, which makes them unwatchable,” said Venkiteswaran, who never understood why Kerala film goers raved for him.

“It’s quite amusing. Maybe it was because the films portrayed explicit violence and sexuality in a way that could never be portrayed in films here, something a lot of people have fascination for,” said Venkiteswaran.