Monkey Town premieres Mago

Friday and Saturday, January 4 and 5
Admission: $5, $10 minimum
Showtimes: Friday, 7:30 and 10pm; Saturday 7:30pm ONLY
reservations are recommended

Mago, from Korean director Kang Hyeon-Il and writer Jang Kyung-Ki is one of the largest-ever Korean film productions, though few souls outside of that country have experienced its unique charms.  Described alternately as "dazzling and daring, mind-blowing and surreal, beautiful and horrifying" or "pretentious, vulgar, unbelievable, mind numbing, and appallingly hypocritical," the film is most notable for the acreage of epidermis employed in telling its tale.  Although the Korean government is very conservative about nudity and sexuality depicted in mainstream movies, Mago escaped the ban by relentlessly and with grim precision neutralizing sex with anti-sex for the duration of the film, a monumental alchemical artistic feat with dubious and discomfiting results.

Purportedly depicting the zen story of creation, beginning with paradise and progressing into man's destruction, Mago is a mashup of nostalgic pre-Christian Korean creationism and this misguided modern world we call home. The visceral implication: our hospitals, cyber cafes and subways are a very poor substitute for a world where 825 care-and-clothing-free elemental goddesses spend their days frolicking or in benign appreciation of the air and nakedness.

Is it art caught in the culture gap or heartless exploitation fare?  As with all misfit masterworks, opinions run the gamut:

"although I don't know much about Zen or the YinYang symbol, I found the film to be unique and a very moving experience. It's like nothing I've ever seen in American cinema! 10/10"

"It's quite beautiful and surprisingly wholesome, proving that the unclothed human body is a work of art and nothing to be ashamed of."

"yet more proof that Korean cinema is a force to be reckoned with."

or

"Mago's incoherence is only outstripped by its pretentiousness. It’s like the Cremaster cycle with a dub track by Greenpeace."

"ends up feeling like being locked in a room with a snotty teenage zealot who beats you with a stick"

"One of the biggest "HUH?" movies ever made."

For this exclusive remixed presentation, Monkey Town has invited over 50 audio artists to re-imagine the tale with a new original soundtrack.  Additional edits by Sam Zimmerman.  Inserts by Shu Lea Cheang.