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The 17th annual Busan International Film Festival in South Korea has an surprising entry this year. A North Korean romantic-comedy called “Comrade Kim Goes Flying” made its way into the festival. While the majority of North Korean media is typically banned in South Korea, the North Korean film was accepted as a form of cultural [...]
Shane Smith, last seen in Siberia, chasing down North Korean loggers and stumbling into the gulag summit, is back, this time attempting to penetrate the state-run Korean Feature Film Studio outside Pyongyang. (Sorry for the 30 second commercial at the beginning.)
For those of you who missed it, The Crossing is a deeply-affecting film depicting the disintegration of a North Korean family under the twin pressures of a dysfuctional economy and a malevolent political regime. Now, according to Lee Seok Young of the Daily NK, the film has found a new audience via bootlegged DVDs that [...]
The other day I noticed that Aidan Foster-Carter had posted a fascinating propaganda video of Kim Il-sung’s 1975 tour of Romania, Bulgaria, Algeria, Mauritania, and the then-Yugoslavia, featuring, among other things, footage of the Great Leader dancing in the streets: Balázs Szalontai, who actually knows what he is talking about adds, “This is funny enough, [...]
On 26 June at 6:30pm, the Korea Society will be sponsoring a special screening at the Museum Museum of the Moving Image. Winner of the 2010 Pusan International Film Festival NETPAC Award, Director Zhang Lu’s film explores the friendship between two boys, one a DPRK defector who has crossed the Dooman River and the other [...]
I don’t speak Russian so I don’t know if they are being ironic, but from the pseudo-patriot music (think Sasha Baron Cohen’s brother’s soundtrack to “Borat”) to the stentorian announcer (think the “frozen tundra” guy from NFL films) somehow I think that the guys at the Juche Channel are dead serious: Now, that we have a Juche [...]
This one comes from our buddy in Seoul, Dan Pinkston, whose taste normally runs more toward “Soldier of Fortune.” a quirky 10 minute video of Pyongyang by Steve Gong from the One Day on Earth project.
Thanks to a film festival sponsored by the International Rescue Committee in San Diego, I recently had a chance to see Yodok Stories, a documentary film on the making of the musical Yodok Story, which opened in Seoul in March 2006. Thanks to the Asia Society, the movie is coming to DC in mid-May. The [...]
There will be a mini film festival as part of the North Korea Freedom Week 2011 (April 24 – 30, 2011) that the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) is partaking in. The following three movies, Seoul Train, Kimjongilia, and Abduction, will be shown at the West End Cinema located 2301 M Street, [...]
Asia Society is hosting numbers of North Korea-related films in April and May in Washington, D.C. They are all open to public so mark your calendar if you’re interested. Kimjongilia Tuesday, April 12, 2011 @ 6:30pm-8:30pm Speaker: Katy Oh, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Brookings Institution Location: Asia Society [...]
