나무없는 산 TREELESS MOUNTAIN 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Astonishing lead performances by two non-professional child actors distinguish this award-winning, semiautobiographical film by So Yong Kim (In Between Days). Six-year-old Jin and her four-year-old sister Bin are passed among their Korean relatives after their mother undertakes a search for their deadbeat dad. As her young heroines navigate life in Seoul and on a rural farm, Kim offers rare, intimate, yet unsentimental observations about resilience and resourcefulness. "Simply one of the best films about childhood ever made" - Village Voice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OPENS APRIL 22 AT FILM FORUM IN NEW YORK

NATIONAL EXPANSION TO FOLLOW

Written & Directed by:

So Yong Kim

Produced by:

Bradley Rust Gray, Ben Howe, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, So Yong Kim

Running Time:

89 minutes

Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA

World Premiere:

Toronto International Film Festival, 2008

DISTRIBUTOR CONTACT:

George Schmalz

Oscilloscope Pictures

511 Canal Street, #5E

New York, NY 10013

O: 212.219.4029 ext: 35

F: 212.219.9538

george@oscilloscope.net

PUBLICITY CONTACT:

Susan Norget

Susan Norget Film Promotion

198 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1

New York, NY 10013

O: 212.431.0090

F: 212.680.3181

susan@norget.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast

 

Jin	Hee Yeon Kim
Bin	Song Hee Kim
Mom	Soo Ah Lee
Big Aunt	Mi Hyang Kim
Grandma	Boon Tak Park

 

 

Credits
 

Directed by	So Yong Kim
Written by	So Yong Kim
Produced by	Bradley Rust Gray Jay Van Hoy Lars Knudsen Ben Howe So Yong Kim
Director of photography	Anne Misawa
Edited by	So Yong Kim Bradley Rust Gray
Sound by	Eric Offin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- SYNOPSIS

When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, seven-year-old Jin and

her younger sister, Bin, are left to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small

piggy bank and their mother’s promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to

acclimate to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed

young girls eagerly anticipate their mother’s homecoming. But when the bank fills up, and with

their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children. Taken

to live on their grandparent’s farm, it is here that Jin comes to learn the importance of family

bonds in this beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking second feature from So Yong Kim, the

acclaimed director of IN BETWEEN DAYS.

Variety’s Robert Koehler said of Kim’s film: “drawing out beautifully natural performances from

her child actors, Kim once again has a distinct way of letting her camera observe her characters

with kind thoughtfulness, allowing for a quiet mood to wash over the scenes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- STATEMENT FROM DIRECTOR - SO YONG KIM

TREELESS MOUNTAIN is inspired by events from my early childhood in Pusan, Korea. My

mother divorced our father and left us with our grandparents on a rice farm. She immigrated to

America in order to find a better life for herself and to build a future for her children. At the time

of these events we were too young to understand and our mother did not tell us what was

happening. I began writing the film to search for certain lost memories from this period of my life

and also as a letter to my mother.

As the story began to take shape, Jin, the main character, took on her own distinctive

personality and blossomed. As the writing progressed, the story and the characters began to

separate from actual events from my life. Jin's emotional and physical journey became the main

force of the story. As in the case of the Aimie character in IN BETWEEN DAYS, I used my

personal memories and experience as the starting point to develop Jin, and then allowed her to

dictate her own journey.

TREELESS MOUNTAIN is a simple story about a six-year-old girl, Jin, and her journey to early

maturity. Jin's sensitivity and the complexity of the emotions stem from her desire to have her

family life back. She must let go of everything she has known in order to persevere. In this

sense TREELESS MOUNTAIN is an intimate portrait of a young girl and a classic coming-ofage

story. I wanted to tell the story of Jin in order to celebrate her resilience in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR - SO YONG KIM

ABOUT THE CAST

The most important and difficult task in making the film was finding the two leads.

In order to cast Jin, we visited 14 elementary schools and kindergartens in Seoul City. When I

first met Hee Yeon Kim, who plays Jin in the film, I had this gut feeling that she was the one.

When I approached her in the school's cafeteria, she told me it was her dream to have a

younger sister. After that she corrected my poor Korean. I fell for her completely.

While casting, we took our 7-month-old daughter with us to the schools since we couldn't afford

a full-time babysitter. This ended up being a benefit to the film. It turned out that the only reason

we got permission from Hee Yeon's mother to use Hee Yeon for the film was because when she

saw our daughter with us she thought we were decent parents. Afterwards, she trusted that we

would take good care of Hee Yeon.

In June of 2007, Song Hee's picture was e-mailed to us by our assistant who was working on a

community project for her university which involved visiting orphanages in the out-skirts of

Seoul. When I saw the photographs I wanted to meet Song Hee because of her amazing smile.

We drove three hours from Seoul to meet her at Wonjoo Children's House. We auditioned Song

Hee along with her housemates.

Song Hee, despite being the youngest in a group of girls, was the most focused and intuitive.

She did not shy away nor did she try to impress us. In addition to her bright smile, her face

portrayed an intensity rarely seen in a five-year-old.

 

The two girls met for the first time a week before we started shooting in Seoul at a noodle

restaurant. They became fast sisters, sharing and fighting throughout the production.

Grandma, played by Boon Tak Park, was cast from a local farmer's market at the location two

days before the scenes were to be shot, where she was selling an upset-stomach remedy out of

a plastic bag. Her physique and mannerisms reminded me of my grandmother. It turned out that

Boon Tak was born in Hunghae and married when she was young. Her husband passed away

suddenly while she was in her early thirties and she supported her three children by farming and

doing manual labor for various farms and families in the village.

 

The mother and Big Aunt are played by seasoned actors: Soo Ah Lee and Mi Hyang Kim

respectively. Korean director Lee Chang Dong recommended them for their roles. Soo Ah Lee

was just returning to the Korean screens after many years of absence. She connected to the

story in a personal way and I was impressed by the sympathy she had for the character. The

actress Mi Hyang Kim's background is in the theater. I was won over by her honesty and

dedication to her craft. She was a force during production, winning over the two lead girls and

the crew with her wisdom and enthusiasm for the project. I am indebted to her for her

interpretation and realization of Big Aunt.

 

 

 

LOCATIONS

Big Aunt's town and Grandma's farm are both located in and around my hometown, Hunghae. It

was my dream to shoot the film there. We found the farm through a distant aunt who still had

connections in town. Our line producer helped us secure Big Aunt's house. We found the rest of

the locations and the extras while we were shooting. The cast and crew lived in the town for

three weeks.

 

 

PRODUCTION AND POST-PRODUCTION

I wanted to keep the crew size to a bare minimum because it was important to keep the set

quiet for the girls. The crew of TREELESS MOUNTAIN was only twelve people, half from the

States and the other from Korea. The film was shot on Arrri Super-16 and we shot over 40

hours of footage.

Before we began production I decided that I would talk with the girls during each take. They

didn't read the script and didn't know the details of the scenes until the moment we were

shooting. I usually fed them lines and asked them to do specific things while the camera was

rolling. This process helped to keep them engaged. Although some of the scenes required

multiple takes and few were heavily scripted, I tried to capture the two girls' spontaneous

interactions and natural moments as much as possible. Due to this particular nature of working

with the young cast, the most challenging part of the post-production was cleaning up the

sound. It was very difficult to edit my voice out of all the tracks.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

I dreamt of making TREELESS MOUNTAIN even before my first feature, IN BETWEEN DAYS.

Five years ago, when I first started writing the story, I felt that I didn't have enough skills as a

filmmaker nor the confidence to begin. Also, because of the film's intense personal nature, I

needed more time to de-personalize the story and to develop the characters more. In the

meantime I saw two films with young non-actors playing lead roles: PONETTE and NOBODY

KNOWS. These films made me think that making TREELESS MOUNTAIN with young girls

would be possible. I finished the first draft of the script in 2005.

The most amazing thing that happened in our lives since making IN BETWEEN DAYS was that

we had our baby daughter, Sky. For some reason, after I became a mother, I wanted to tell this

story even more.

Each film for me is a privilege to make. I try to gain as much knowledge as I can from each

project and to learn something about my self and the environment that we live in. It is my hope

that this search is shared with the audience.

 

 

 

- FILMMAKER BIOS

SO YONG KIM – WRITER/ DIRECTOR

TREELESS MOUNTAIN is So Yong Kim’s second feature film. The script received support from

the Cannes L’Atelier Program, the Sundance Institute’s Writers and Directors Labs, and the

Pusan Promotional Program.

Kim’s first feature, IN BETWEEN DAYS, was acclaimed by critics and won the Special Jury

Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival along with the International Critics’ Prize at Berlin. It

was also awarded an LA Critics Prize and Best Film and Best Actress Prizes at Buenos Aires.

Kino International and the Sundance Channel released the film in North America, and With

Cinema released the film in Korea.

So Yong Kim was born in Pusan, South Korea and immigrated to the US when she was twelve.

She studied painting, performance, and video art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

where she earned her MFA. She has made several experimental short films including A BUNNY

RABBIT, shot by renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Kim also produced Bradley

Rust Gray's award-winning Icelandic feature, SALT, in 2003. In 2006, Kim was featured as one

of the “25 Filmmakers to Watch” in Filmmaker Magazine.

 

 

BRADLEY RUST GRAY – PRODUCER

Bradley Rust Gray produced So Yong Kim’s IN BETWEEN DAYS. He recently completed

production on his second feature, THE EXPLODING GIRL, starring Zoe Kazan and Mark

Rendall.

Gray’s first narrative feature, SALT, was filmed in Iceland and won the Caligari Film Prize for

Innovative Filmmaking at Berlin in 2003. It was selected for over 20 international film festivals

and won three more international awards. The film was released on Sundance Channel in the

US. Gray’s short film hITCH won an award at Sundance in 2000 and was selected as one of the

“Best Films of the Year” in Film Comment Magazine.

Gray is a Fulbright scholar who has received graduate degrees from both USC and the British

Film Institute in London. His undergraduate work focused on architecture, sculpture, and

experimental filmmaking, with a degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

 

JAY VAN HOY & LARS KNUDSEN – PRODUCERS

PARTS AND LABOR is a company dedicated to director-driven, collaborative filmmaking.

Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy established the company in 2004. The producers have

completed seven feature films with an additional three films currently in post-production and two

films lined up for a Fall/Winter ’08 shoot while keeping several other features – documentaries

and narratives – in active development. In addition to producing, Knudsen and Van Hoy are

consultants to Scott Rudin, one of the American film industry's most prolific producers; they

inform and advise him regarding new talent and groundbreaking filmmakers from around the

world.

 

Knudsen and Van Hoy produced Kelly Reichardt's OLD JOY, Cam Archer's WILD TIGERS I

HAVE KNOWN, Steve Collins' GRETCHEN, and Spencer Parsons' I'LL COME RUNNING. In

addition to TREELESS MOUNTAIN, their most recent projects include Nik Fackler's LOVELY,

STILL, Cruz Angeles' DON’T LET ME DROWN, David Barker's UNTITLED, and Cam Archer's

SHIT YEAR.

Knudsen and Van Hoy made Variety's “10 Producers to Watch” list in 2008. In 2006, they

were singled out in Filmmaker Magazine's “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Paste

Magazine also included them on their 2006 Top 10 List of “Arthouse Powerhouse Producers.”

 

 

BEN HOWE – PRODUCER

Ben Howe is an independent producer based in New York City. Along with TREELESS

MOUNTAIN, his recent credits include Matt Wolf’s documentary WILD COMBINATION: A

PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR RUSSELL, which premiered at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival, and will

be distributed theatrically by Plexifilm in September 2008. Ben has also produced three features

currently in post-production: Cruz Angeles’ DON’T LET ME DROWN, an untitled thriller directed

by David Barker, and Bradley Rust Gray’s THE EXPLODING GIRL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Features

Deleted scenes and outtakes.
Audio commentary with director So Yong Kim and Producer Bradley Rust Gray.
Post Screening Q&A with So Yong Kim at New York's Film Forum.
Interview with child actors Kim Hee Yeon and Kim Song Hee at the 16th Annual Altin Koza Film Festival in Adana, Turkey.

 

Release Info

Catalog Number: OSC-007
UPC: 896602002098

Press Downloads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download Treeless Mountain Press Packet [13 MB]

http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500564474/

http://www.oscilloscope.net/shop/view_film.php?ID=7

http://www.soandbrad.com/images/pdf/TM_OscPressNotes.pdf