The underside of a coffee house tradition long central to Korean society, Ticket Dabangs were rife with casual prostitution, but one of the few employment options for working class women in small regional farm- and fishing towns. A key achievement of Im’s mid 1980s cycle of ‘women’s’ melodramas, it’s a confronting yet moving analysis of the class condition of South Korean women during its 1980s economic miracle, made in close collaboration with the auteur-producer and ‘Elizabeth Taylor of Korean cinema’, Kim Ji-mee.
Presented with the support of the Australia-Korea Foundation. Co-presented with the Korean Film Archive (KOFA).
Ticket is preserved and was digitally restored in 2K by the Korean Film Archive KOFA.
“… the film’s skilful blend of social realism, metaphor and heightened drama seems in many ways central to his style…[I]n the vein of Mizoguchi’s Street of Shame… [i]t’s easy to see why Korean audiences found it shocking in 1986, but [Ticket] works now as an intimate and poignant portrait of a group of women.” - Tony Rayns, San Francisco Film Festival.
Unclassified 15+
108 min
Ji-mee Kim, Ahn So-young, Hui Myeong, Lee Hye-young, Se-young
Im Kwon-Taek