Projects
Summer Rhapsody
Genre: Offbeat Comedy
Dir/Writer: Stephen Kang
Exec Prod: Leanne Saunders/ Ant Timpson
Tagline:
Boredom, blood drinking and bok choy.
Second feature from writer/ director Stephen Kang is a laconic comedy in which a lonely student finds his static world turned inside out by the mysterious reappearance of a friend with troubling feeding habits.
Synopsis:
After finishing his very first year at University, James returns to his parents home in a quiet suburb to spend some time during his very first university summer holiday. However he soon finds out there is nothing else to do except watching television and helping with some housework.
One strange rainy day a Chinese girl, Jenny, turns up at their house. Jenny had disappeared without trace a few years earlier when she was a homestay student in James' home. She claims that she had to return her homeland of China for financial reasons, and now she has decided to come back to apologise in person. Surprised and shocked James tries to believe her.
Over the next few days James also reunites with two of his high school friends, Min and Mark, and they all hang around quite Auckland suburb together. They soon find out something is wrong with Jenny. She now claims she can only consume human blood. At first they are shocked, but after a guy is knocked unconscious accidentally, they all find reasons to hunt for victims. Their friendship grows with all these events, but they are blind to the consequences as they are drawn in to feed Jenny's hunger.
SUMMER RHAPSODY deals with emotional issues common to all young adults – themes of belonging to peer groups, sexual frustration and competition, and finding one's place in the world. "I wrote SUMMER RHAPSODY to express my emotions from the time that was one of the important transitional periods in my life. And to tell these stories to anyone who can relate to those feelings/moods, or a similar transitional time in their lives. This is a letter to those people."
Born in Seoul, Korea, Stephen moved to New Zealand in 1993. Kang studied video art, performance and time based art and gained a Bachelor In Fine Arts at the Elam School of Art, Auckland University. He produced and directed number of experimental videos and short films while studying.
Armed with Fine Art background and design experience Kang completed his first no-budget digital feature {DREAM} PRESERVED (2006). Awards for {DREAM} PRESERVED include "Best Digital Feature' Air New Zealand Screen Awards 2007, 'Winner' -Overseas Koreans Independent Contest 2007; and 'Runner Up' at DigiSPAA – Screen Producers Association Australia 2007.
Stephen was selected for and attended the Berlinale Talent Campus as part of the Berlin International Film Festival, 2007. SUMMER RHAPSODY will be Kang's second feature film as a writer/ director.