Bong Joon-ho’s ear­ly shorts are com­ing to the UK for the first time

Though viral idioms may be a bit iffy right now, it’s still entire­ly accu­rate to say that the world has been swept up by Bong fever in the wake of the filmmaker’s under­dog Best Pic­ture win for Par­a­site. A spiffy 4K restora­tion of his Mem­o­ries of Mur­der is on the way, and soon, Bong Joon-ho com­pletists in the UK will get the chance to see some of his more obscure work for the very first time.

The fine folks at the Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val have pro­grammed a pair of Bong’s ear­ly shorts to be shown as part of their pro­gramme lat­er this month. 1994’s Inco­her­ence and 2004’s Influen­za have nev­er been screened or avail­able to stream in Britain, mak­ing this a rev­e­la­to­ry event for a fac­tion of Kore­an cin­e­ma enthu­si­asts that’s grown notice­ably in recent months.

Bong’s stu­dent the­sis film Inco­her­ence splits a half-hour into four episod­ic parts, all of which take place at a uni­ver­si­ty and sat­i­rize the hier­ar­chy or teach­ers and pupils. Even in his embry­on­ic stage as an artist, Bong had a ful­ly-formed sense of his style – the black com­e­dy, tonal shifts and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the pol­i­tics of pow­er that have per­sist­ed through to the present.

Influen­za diverges from his usu­al by tak­ing a mock­u­men­tary approach, delv­ing into the exper­i­men­tal by com­pil­ing the entire film through CCTV footage. Watch­ing in sta­t­ic, imper­son­al wide shots, we see a man’s finan­cial and per­son­al col­lapse send him to depths of des­per­a­tion – a typ­i­cal cir­cum­stance for the auteur, enlivened here by a nov­el aesthetic.

For years, these two selec­tions were incred­i­bly rare in the West­ern world, but recent efforts have made them more acces­si­ble in the US, and it’s good to see a sim­i­lar right­ing of that wrong play­ing out over­seas. No such thing as too much of a good thing, when that good thing is unseen works by Bong Joon-ho. Also includ­ed in the pro­gramme is a rare on-screen per­for­mance from Bong in the 2009 short Some Light? by Kang Dae-hee.

The Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val takes place from 29 Octo­ber to 12 Novem­ber. For more info vis­it kore​an​film​.co​.uk