Followed by a talk on Zoom

On a chicken farm, a love triangle is drawn between a composer, his wife and a young girl from the countryside. Through a series of twists and turns, their lives are thrown into turmoil when the new housemaid transforms into a femme fatale. Woman of Fire is a remake of Kim Ki-young’s classic The Housemaid (1960), stylized with the energy and passion of 1970s Korean cinema. A highly lurid chamber drama set against the backdrop of social inequality, the two women play games of seduction and trickery, ultimately descending together with the household’s male figure. Grotesque melodrama sits at the heart of this film, encapsulating the fatality and futility of women’s roles in the domestic horror genre.

The screening of the film is supported by the Korean Film Archive.

Nikki J.Y. Lee is a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. Her research interests include the history of Noir genre films in South Korean cinema and the globalization of the Korean film industry. In the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University, she mainly teaches Asian Media and Cinema and Documentary. Apart from her professional career as an academic researcher and lecturer, she worked as an independent documentary-maker; as an interpreter and translator for film-related events and media; and was involved in organising the first London Korean Film Festival in 2001.