Actresses (Korea, 2009)

New York Premiere / Director E J-Yong will be at the screenings

"Actresses is the breeziest 104 minutes of the festival, as make-up tips and drunken ramblings set against a Christmas Eve photo shoot are more fun than a giant mutant turtle hellbent on destroying Japan." -John Lichman, SLATE

"a must for diva connoisseurs." -Steve Erickson, Gay City News

If celebrity is the art form of our times, then ACTRESSES is the most dizzying, hall-of-mirrors art project ever unleashed in a movie theater, like something Andy Warhol would have dreamed up if he was the editor of US Weekly. A minute-by-minute record of a Christmas Eve Vogue Korea cover shoot it features six of Korea's greatest actresses playing...themselves.

• Youn Yuh-Jung

  The fabulous old grand dame of Korean cinema. A bitchy, insecure diva who comes across like a Korean Bette Davis.

• Lee Mi-Suk

  One of the "Troika of the 80's" she ruled Korean screens in that decade but now age has mellowed her into a seen-it-all trooper.

• Choi Ji-Woo

  A model turned TV drama actress, Choi has an army of Japanese fans who fanatically worship her every move, naming her "Princess Ji Woo." This international fan base gives her a security that the other actresses envy.

• Ko Hyun-Jung

  A TV star who married into the wildly wealthy Samsung family in 1995, she retired from acting for almost ten years. Then she sparked a scandal by getting divorced, talking openly about her plastic surgery and returning to the screen where she became a favorite of arthouse auteur, Hong Sang-Soo.

• Kim Min-Hee

  A trend-setting clothes-horse, Kim Min-Hee is one of those young stars whose every dress sets a trend, whose every gesture is breathlessly captured by the paparazzi and whose every movement is scrutinized by the tabloids.

• Kim Ok-Vin

  The youngest of the bunch, she was discovered by director E J-Yong in his DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS and sky-rocketed to fame when she was the only Korean actress willing to take on the overtly sexual leading role in Park Chan-Wook's THIRST.

As the photo shoot breaks down into chaos, these actress send up their own identities, shuffling them as quickly as a magician cutting a rigged deck at dizzying speed. And at the end, E J-Yong, one of Korea's great directors of women, shows us that his actresses are slightly silly, slightly self-important, somewhat self-obsessed, completely self-sacrificing, stupid and smart in equal measure. It's a movie that fluently speaks the international language of celebrity.