Korean War Filmography

Korean War Filmography
Author: Robert J. Lentz
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2016-05-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476621543

The Korean experience changed the way Americans viewed war. The lack of a clear-cut victory inspired filmmakers to try to make sense of fighting another country's civil war and risking American lives for an unpopular cause. This filmography details more than 90 English-language films. Each entry includes complete cast and credit listings, a plot synopsis, evaluation, review snippets, and notice of video availability. This book places each film in its historical context, assesses the essential truthfulness of each film and evaluates its entertainment value, and discusses how--and why--Korean War films differ from other Hollywood war genres. Four appendices list the films by chronology; production company and studio; level of historical accuracy; and subject and theme. Additional appendices list films with incidental references to the Korean War; documentaries on the Korean War; and South Korean films about the war. Photographs, a bibliography, and an index are included.

A Guide to Films on the Korean War

A Guide to Films on the Korean War
Author: Paul M. Edwards
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1997-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313387729

Written by a knowledgeable film critic and Korean War scholar, this is the only guide exclusively devoted to the study of Hollywood and television films based on the Korean War, 1950-1953. It opens with eight short essays, discussing the appeal of the war film genre, government and filmmaker cooperation, the isolation of Korean War films from other war films, why John Wayne didn't make a Korean War film, the other actors who did, the plots of Korean War films, television and Korean War films, and the myths resulting from films. Eighty-four films are then discussed in alphabetically arranged entries. The entries include production unit, color status, producer, director, screenwriter, actors and actresses, movie length, and the author's numerical rating of the film. The commentary places each film within the context of other war films, the Korean War, trends in Hollywood, and the social and political realities of the United States. The films also are listed chronologically. Producers, directors, screenwriters, actors, and actresses are indexed by responsibility and are included in the general index. The book also provides a list of 109 documentary films available for public viewing.

A Guide to Films on the Korean War

A Guide to Films on the Korean War
Author: Paul M. Edwards
Publisher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1997-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313303169

Written by a knowledgeable film critic and Korean War scholar, this is the only guide exclusively devoted to the study of Hollywood and television films based on the Korean War, 1950-1953. It opens with eight short essays, discussing the appeal of the war film genre, government and filmmaker cooperation, the isolation of Korean War films from other war films, why John Wayne didn't make a Korean War film, the other actors who did, the plots of Korean War films, television and Korean War films, and the myths resulting from films. Eighty-four films are then discussed in alphabetically arranged entries. The entries include production unit, color status, producer, director, screenwriter, actors and actresses, movie length, and the author's numerical rating of the film. The commentary places each film within the context of other war films, the Korean War, trends in Hollywood, and the social and political realities of the United States. The films also are listed chronologically. Producers, directors, screenwriters, actors, and actresses are indexed by responsibility and are included in the general index. The book also provides a list of 109 documentary films available for public viewing.

The Last Stand of Fox Company

The Last Stand of Fox Company
Author: Bob Drury
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2009-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1555849121

“The authors of the bestselling Halsey’s Typhoon do a fine job recounting one brutal, small-unit action during the Korean War’s darkest moment.” —Publishers Weekly November 1950, the Korean Peninsula. After General MacArthur ignores Mao’s warnings and pushes his UN forces deeper into North Korea, his 10,000 First Division Marines find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir. Their only chance for survival is to fight their way south through the Toktong Pass, a narrow gorge that will need to be held open at all costs. The mission is handed to Captain William Barber and the 234 Marines of Fox Company, a courageous but undermanned unit of the First Marines. Barber and his men climb seven miles of frozen terrain to a rocky promontory overlooking the pass, where they will endure four days and five nights of nearly continuous Chinese attempts to take Fox Hill. Amid the relentless violence, three-quarters of Fox’s Marines are killed, wounded, or captured. Just when it looks like they will be overrun, Lt. Colonel Raymond Davis, a fearless Marine officer who is fighting south from Chosin, volunteers to lead a daring mission that will seek to cut a hole in the Chinese lines and relieve the men of Fox. This is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism in the face of impossible odds.

Remembering the Forgotten War

Remembering the Forgotten War
Author: Philip West
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2015-02-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317461029

In contrast to the many books that use military, diplomatic, and historic language in analyzing the Korean War, this book takes a cultural approach that emphasizes the human dimension of the war, an approach that especially features Korean voices. There are chapters on Korean art on the war, translations into English of Korean poetry by Korean soldiers, and American soldier poetry on the war. There is a photographic essay on the war by combat journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Max Desfor. Another chapter includes and analyzes songs on the Korean War - Korean, American, and Chinese - that illuminate the many complex memories of the war. There is a discussion of Korean films on the war and a chapter on Korean War POWs and their contested memories. More than any other nonfiction book on the war, this one shows us the human face of tragedy for Americans, Chinese, and most especially Koreans. June 2000 was the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War; this moving volume is intended as a commemoration of it.

Devotion

Devotion
Author: Adam Makos
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0804176590

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • From America’s “forgotten war” in Korea comes an unforgettable tale of courage by the author of A Higher Call. “In the spirit of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat comes Devotion.”—Associated Press • “Aerial drama at its best—fast, powerful, and moving.”—Erik Larson Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy’s most famous aviation duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African American sharecropper’s son from Mississippi, Jesse became the navy’s first Black carrier pilot, defending a nation that wouldn’t even serve him in a bar. While much of America remained divided by segregation, Jesse and Tom joined forces as wingmen in Fighter Squadron 32. Adam Makos takes us into the cockpit as these bold young aviators cut their teeth at the world’s most dangerous job—landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier—a line of work that Jesse’s young wife, Daisy, struggles to accept. Deployed to the Mediterranean, Tom and Jesse meet the Fleet Marines, boys like PFC “Red” Parkinson, a farm kid from the Catskills. In between war games in the sun, the young men revel on the Riviera, partying with millionaires and even befriending the Hollywood starlet Elizabeth Taylor. Then comes the conflict that no one expected: the Korean War. Devotion takes us soaring overhead with Tom and Jesse, and into the foxholes with Red and the Marines as they battle a North Korean invasion. As the fury of the fighting escalates and the Marines are cornered at the Chosin Reservoir, Tom and Jesse fly, guns blazing, to try and save them. When one of the duo is shot down behind enemy lines and pinned in his burning plane, the other faces an unthinkable choice: watch his friend die or attempt history’s most audacious one-man rescue mission. A tug-at-the-heartstrings tale of bravery and selflessness, Devotion asks: How far would you go to save a friend?

Cold War Cosmopolitanism

Cold War Cosmopolitanism
Author: Christina Klein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-01-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0520968980

South Korea in the 1950s was home to a burgeoning film culture, one of the many “Golden Age cinemas” that flourished in Asia during the postwar years. Cold War Cosmopolitanism offers a transnational cultural history of South Korean film style in this period, focusing on the works of Han Hyung-mo, director of the era’s most glamorous and popular women’s pictures, including the blockbuster Madame Freedom (1956). Christina Klein provides a unique approach to the study of film style, illuminating how Han’s films took shape within a “free world” network of aesthetic and material ties created by the legacies of Japanese colonialism, the construction of US military bases, the waging of the cultural Cold War by the CIA, the forging of regional political alliances, and the import of popular cultures from around the world. Klein combines nuanced readings of Han’s sophisticated style with careful attention to key issues of modernity—such as feminism, cosmopolitanism, and consumerism—in the first monograph devoted to this major Korean director. A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

The Korean War and Postmemory Generation

The Korean War and Postmemory Generation
Author: Dong-Yeon Koh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2021-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000407551

This pioneering volume navigates cultural memory of the Korean War through the lens of contemporary arts and film in South Korea for the last two decades. Cultural memory of the Korean War has been a subject of persistent controversy in the forging of South Korean postwar national and ideological identity. Applying the theoretical notion of “postmemory,” this book examines the increasingly diversified attitudes toward memories of the Korean War and Cold War from the late 1990s and onward, particularly in the demise of military dictatorships. Chapters consider efforts from younger generation artists and filmmakers to develop new ways of representing traumatic memories by refusing to confine themselves to the tragic experiences of survivors and victims. Extensively illustrated, this is one of the first volumes in English to provide an in-depth analysis of work oriented around such themes from 12 renowned and provocative South Korean artists and filmmakers. This includes documentary photographs, participatory public arts, independent women’s documentary films, and media installations. The Korean War and Postmemory Generation will appeal to students and scholars of film studies, contemporary art, and Korean history.

Divided Lenses

Divided Lenses
Author: Michael Berry
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2017-12-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824875109

Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia is the first attempt to explore how the tumultuous years between 1931 and 1953 have been recreated and renegotiated in cinema. This period saw traumatic conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War, and pivotal events such as the Rape of Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which left a lasting imprint on East Asia and the world. By bringing together a variety of specialists in the cinemas of East Asia and offering divergent yet complementary perspectives, the book explores how the legacies of war have been reimagined through the lens of film. This turbulent era opened with the Mukden Incident of 1931, which signaled a new page in Japanese militaristic aggression in East Asia, and culminated with the Korean War (1950–1953), a protracted conflict that broke out in the wake of Japan's post–World War II withdrawal from Korea. Divided Lenses explores the ways in which events of the intervening decades have continued to shape politics and popular culture throughout East Asia and the world. The essays in part I examine historical trends at work in various "national" cinemas, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Those in part 2 focus on specific themes present in the cinema portraying this period—such as comfort women in Chinese film, the Nanjing Massacre, or nationalism—and how they have been depicted or renegotiated in contemporary films. Of particular interest are contributions drawing from other forms of screen culture, such as television and video games. Divided Lenses builds on the growing interest in East Asian cinema by examining how these historic conflicts have been imagined, framed, and revisited through the lens of cinema and screen culture. It will interest later generations living in the shadow of these events, as well as students and scholars in the fields of cinema studies, cultural studies, cold war studies, and World War II history.