The stars of the Asian big screen have been out in force this month as the 17th Busan International Film Festival opened for business.
ery much a Cannes for the East Asian region, the glitzy event has been held annually since 1996, showcasing offerings from across the cinematic spectrum, from mega budget blockbusters, to indie and art house features from across Asia. This year, however, one film in particular stood out against the backdrop of this filmic smorgasbord – Comrade Kim Goes Flying, described as a light-hearted romantic comedy, is unusual in that would generally be prohibited by law from viewing it. Why? The film was written and produced in North Korea.
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23HvGKGR3Sg[/youtube]
The film, a joint production co-directed by a North Korean and two European film makers, was shot on location in Pyongyang with a North Korean cast and crew, and follows the exploits of a young female coal miner who dreams of becoming a trapeze artist. Given the pariah state’s fearsome international reputation, that the government of North Korea would be willing, or indeed able, to assign scarce resources to the production of a feature film may come as a surprise to many. Contrary to any such assumptions however, the country has long been home to a thriving film industry – albeit one which has rarely garnered positive critical attention outside of its home market – which, at its height, turned out upwards of forty films a year.
[quote align=”center” color=”#b64736″] Comrade Kim Goes Flying, described as a light-hearted romantic comedy, is unusual in that would generally be prohibited by law from viewing it[/quote]Rumoured to possess a personal collection encompassing in excess of 20,000 DVDs, former leader, noted cinephile, and self-proclaimed “genius of cinema” Kim Jong-Il was, in many ways, the driving force behind the secretive nation’s cinema industry. The notorious dictator assigned himself the aforementioned epithet in his ‘On the Art of Cinema’. Published in 1973, this treatise was just one of many attributed to Kim dealing with the subject of film and its importance to the pursuit of the revolutionary cause.
Mirroring Lenin’s belief that ‘Cinema is the most important of the arts’, Kim viewed the cinema as a potentially powerful ideological weapon. Long before ascending to his father’s throne, therefore, the younger Kim took an increasingly hands-on role in the running of the North Korea Film Studio located just outside of Pyongyang, leading the industry into a period of unparalleled productivity in the 1970s and 80s.
[quote align=”center” color=”#b64736″]self-proclaimed “genius of cinema” Kim Jong-Il was, in many ways, the driving force behind the secretive nation’s cinema industry[/quote]
While the domestic reception for these films proved predictably lavish, with one 1974 publication declaring them no less than ‘the most wonderful movies ever produced’, critics outside of North Korea were generally less complementary – with a few notable exceptions such as the comparatively well regarded 1969 film ‘Sea of Blood’, the studio’s output was near universally lambasted by overseas critics as syrupy propaganda.
Apparently unperturbed but such assessments, Kim’s obsession with film reached its bizarre zenith when in 1978 he authorised the kidnapping of prolific South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife, the actress Choi Eun-hee. The pair were set to work producing a number of films, perhaps most infamously the 1985 monster movie Pulgasari. Essentially a socialist Godzilla in which an enormous iron chewing beast battles against feudal warlords and greedy peasants alike in an extended metaphor for the evils of unchecked capitalism, the film was releases a year before Shin and Choi made their escape to Vienna in 1986.
[quote align=”center” color=”#b64736″]the country’s cinema holds an undeniable fascination for a certain sector of the film-viewing public[/quote]While the North Korean film industry may have tailed off since this peak of productivity, the capacity crowd for the showing of Comrade Kim Goes Flying in Busan attests to the fact that the country’s cinema holds an undeniable fascination for a certain sector of the film-viewing public. That said, critics have taken a typically dull view of the film, labelling its efforts at comedy banal and uninspired, and its portrayal of North Korea as surreal in its positivity.
With the death last year of Kin Jong-il, North Korean cinema lost perhaps its most vocal proponent. Undoubtedly there will still be those operating within the regime who recognise the value of film as a political weapon, but it remains to be seen whether this latest effort is a flash in the pan, or indicative of a new wave of cinematic propaganda to emerge from this most secretive of states.
by Sam Jones
