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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 Washington, The Cinnabar Room, Whittemore House, 2nd Floor, 1526 New Hampshire Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
RSVP: RSVP to: [email protected].
Open to the public
How can a nation of nearly 24 million people hold up one of the world's most infamous despots as a hero? At home, Kim Jong-Il is all but worshiped by the vast majority of his subjects, who celebrate him in song and legend, and one admirer has even bred a special begonia in his honor, which is named Kimjongilia and said to celebrate "wisdom, justice, love, and peace." Dancer-turned-filmmaker N.C. Heikin examines both sides of Kim Jong-Il's public persona in the documentary Kimjongilia, which compares and contrasts interviews with North Koreans who speak with awe and admiration of their president (alongside unintentionally comic state-produced propaganda films) with shocking testimony from South Korean exiles who suffered at the hands of Kim's police and spent years in his prisons. Kimjongilia received its North American premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
Yodok Stories
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 @ 6:30pm-8:30pm
Location: Asia Society Washington, The Cinnabar Room, Whittemore House, 2nd Floor, 1526 New Hampshire Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
RSVP: RSVP to: [email protected].
Open to the public
Yodok Stories is a documentary film directed by Andrzej Fidyk and produced by Torstein Grude. Today, more than 200,000 men, women and children face torture, starvation and murder in North Korea's concentration camps. Few survive the atrocities, yet the camps population is kept stable by a steady influx of new persons considered to be 'class enemies'. A small group of people have managed to flee the camps and start a new life in the prosperous South Korea. The film follows some of these refugees who despite fear of persecution and death threats produce an extraordinary musical about their experiences in the Yodok concentration camp. Yodok Stories won the Planet Doc Review, Youth Jury Award in Poland and the Bergen International Film Festival, Youth Jury's Documentary Award in 2008. The film has been screened at numerous film festivals worldwide, including the Tribeca Film Festival and Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2009.
A State of Mind
Thursday, May 26, 2011 @ 6:30pm-8:30pm
Location: Asia Society Washington, The Cinnabar Room, Whittemore House, 2nd Floor, 1526 New Hampshire Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
RSVP: RSVP to: [email protected].
Open to the public
Following on from the 2002 RTS award winning documentary The Game of Their Lives, VeryMuchSo productions were granted permission from the North Korean film authorities to make a second documentary. Entitled A State of Mind, the film provides a rare glimpse into what is one of the world’s least known societies. North Korea is sealed off from outside influences. It borders China and Russia to the north, and to the south it borders the DMZ which divides North and South Korea. The country follows its own communist ideals, a strict philosophy known as the Juche Idea wrapped around the worship of the Kim dynasty’s Kim Il-Sung an Kim Jong-Il.