The biography and the filmmaking career path of the American auteur Lee Isaac Chung is a bit peculiar. Born to first-generation Korean immigrant parents, he grew up in rural Arkansas, studied ecology at Yale and planned to go to a medical school before giving it up for his filmmaking dream. After a number of shorts realized during his studies at the University of Utah, his shot his first feature “Munyurangabo” (2007) in Rwanda and in Kinyarwanda language (as the first ever narrative feature film). It premiered at Cannes to a great critical reception, signalling a significant talent on the rise. His next two features, “Lucky Life” (2010) and “Abigail Harm” (2012) were more to the typical American indie side, while he went back to Rwanda to co-direct a documentary called “I Have Seen My Last Born” (2015).
“Minari” is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema
For his last one, “Minari”, premiering...
“Minari” is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema
For his last one, “Minari”, premiering...
- 3/4/2023
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
The biography and the filmmaking career path of the American auteur Lee Isaac Chung is a bit peculiar. Born to first-generation Korean immigrant parents, he grew up in rural Arkansas, studied ecology at Yale and planned to go to a medical school before giving it up for his filmmaking dream. After a number of shorts realized during his studies at the University of Utah, his shot his first feature “Munyurangabo” (2007) in Rwanda and in Kinyarwanda language (as the first ever narrative feature film). It premiered at Cannes to a great critical reception, signalling a significant talent on the rise. His next two features, “Lucky Life” (2010) and “Abigail Harm” (2012) were more to the typical American indie side, while he went back to Rwanda to co-direct a documentary called “I Have Seen My Last Born” (2015).
For his last one, “Minari”, premiering cum laudae at last year’s Sundance, he went back to his personal history.
For his last one, “Minari”, premiering cum laudae at last year’s Sundance, he went back to his personal history.
- 2/19/2021
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
Abigail watches from a distance as the man disrobes. A modestly-handsome Asian man, he has no name, and freely abandons his towel to dowse himself in a tub in the middle of an abandoned studio space. She flinches, waiting for the right moment to seize the towel, to trap him within his own nudity. He’ll be vulnerable, she believes, and they’ll make love. She’s never found love in this city, and now this stranger with bare skin with take her as her own, and she’ll feel valuable for once in a life of solitude. This is the setup for experimental drama “Abigail Harm,” which provides a showcase for underlooked veteran of stage and screen Amanda Plummer. Her Abigail is only the latest in a long line of protagonists who can never find something and instead opt to take it. She doesn’t seem fulfilled, but is...
- 9/3/2013
- by Gabe Toro
- The Playlist
First Do No Harm: Plum for Plummer in Oddly Engaging Fairy Tale
For his third feature film, Lee Isaac Chung adapts a Korean folk tale, “The Woodcutter and the Nymph,” into a modern day fable about companionship and loneliness with Abigail Harm. Showcasing an exemplary lead performance from the consistently underrated Amanda Plummer, there’s an intriguing offbeat rhythm to Chung’s film, which doesn’t always work in the film’s favor. Filled with quiet moments of considerable impact, stilted, hallucinatory pacing sometimes distracts from the emotional potential, never gravitating far enough away from the feeling of fable.
Abigail Harm (Amanda Plummer), an introverted and isolated woman in New York City, reads literature aloud to blind folks, which seems to be the only form of social interaction in which she partakes. We first meet her imbuing the prose of Lewis Carroll with surprising emotion. Next, she’s pinch hitting...
For his third feature film, Lee Isaac Chung adapts a Korean folk tale, “The Woodcutter and the Nymph,” into a modern day fable about companionship and loneliness with Abigail Harm. Showcasing an exemplary lead performance from the consistently underrated Amanda Plummer, there’s an intriguing offbeat rhythm to Chung’s film, which doesn’t always work in the film’s favor. Filled with quiet moments of considerable impact, stilted, hallucinatory pacing sometimes distracts from the emotional potential, never gravitating far enough away from the feeling of fable.
Abigail Harm (Amanda Plummer), an introverted and isolated woman in New York City, reads literature aloud to blind folks, which seems to be the only form of social interaction in which she partakes. We first meet her imbuing the prose of Lewis Carroll with surprising emotion. Next, she’s pinch hitting...
- 8/29/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
I've always liked Amanda Plummer. Her small, gravelly voice, her fawn-like demeanor, and her hidden ferocity have always gotten my attention in the many films in which I've seen her. It's that fragile, otherworldly quality of the seasoned actress that director Lee Isaac Chung (Munyurangabo) taps into and uses to maximum effect in his new feature film, Abigail Harm.This modern day fairy tale is apparently loosely based on a Korean folklore, Woodcutter and the Nymph, which goes something like this: Once there was a poor man who barely eked out a living off of cutting down and selling trees deep in the countryside. One day, he encountered a wounded deer in the forest. The animal pleaded with him to hide him from the hunters. This...
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[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 8/29/2013
- Screen Anarchy
We all require friendship, companionship. In the three films Lee Isaac Chung (known as Isaac) has made, he observes assorted relationships in vastly different milieu: in Munyurangabo (2007), the bustling central market of Kigali, the capitol of Rwanda, and that country’s verdant countryside and poor isolated villages; a beach house smacking of privilege on the southeastern coast of the U.S. in Lucky Life (2010); and, in his latest, the mysterious, inventive Abigail Harm (2013), a large but charmless apartment on a depressing, sparsely populated edge of New York City. The dramatic emphases, however, are less on bonding than on the […]...
- 8/28/2013
- by Howard Feinstein
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
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