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Acknowledgments As detailed in the preface below, this collection of essays originated in a festival of thefilmsof Im Kwon-Taek and a conference about them held concurrently at the University ofSouthern California in 1996. We would like to thank the many people and agencies who contributed to these events, including the School of Cinema-Television, USC; the East Asian Studies Center, USC; the Korean Studies Institute, USC; the Asian Pacific Media Center, USC; the Korea Foundation; the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, its then director, Mr. Hong Sok Lee, and Consul Jin Young Woo; the Korean National Film Archive; and the Korean Ministry of Culture and Sports. Ms. Hyun-Ock Im did much of the difficult and complicated coordination of these events, and without her vision and industry, the festival would not have been possible. We also thank Ms. In Young Nam for her assistance during the festival. The Korean Cultural Center very generously supported the preparation of this manuscript, and we are deeply grateful to Director JongMoon Park and Consul Kyu Hak Choi. Additional research and manuscript preparation work were supported by the Association for Asian 8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Studies Northeast Asia Council and the Center for Humanities at the University of California at Irvine. The Korean Film Archive supplied us with many of the illustrations. Mr. Chung Sung-111 greatly helped us with resources in Korea and advice on many matters. We also thank Chong To-hwan of the Hwachon Film Studio, Park Chong-ch'an of the Shinhan Film Studio, and Yi Tae-won of the Taehung Film Studio for permission to reproduce stills from the films of Im Kwon-Taek: all rights are reserved. The actress Ms. Kang Su-yon, the cinematographer Mr. Chong IIsong , and the actor Mr. An S6ng-gi gave us very valuable insights into Im Kwon-Taek's films. We would especially like to thank Jane Hoehner, Jennifer Backer, and Kathryn Wildfong, our editors at the Wayne State University Press, for their guidance and unstinting support for this project. Sandra Williamson 's creative and sensitive copyediting considerably improved the manuscript; thanks also to Han Ju Kwak and Kelly Jeong for additional proofreading and for standardizing the romanization of Korean words according to the McCune-Reischauer system. (The Korean government recently certified a different system of romanization, but the McCuneReischauer one is presently the norm in academic publishing.) Finally, we would like to thank director Im Kwon-Taek himself for personally delivering preview tapes of his films, for securing permission for us to publish the still photographs in this volume, and for honoring us with his presence during the USC festival. Most of all we thank him for his contributions to cinema. David E. James and Kyung Hyun Kim ...

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