With relations between North Korea and the West in the spotlight, National Geographic is launching a series looking at the ruling Kim family, which has controlled the secretive East Asian state for three generations.
U.K.-based 72 Films is producing the four-part factual series, titled “Inside North Korea’s Dynasty,” which has been a year in the making. Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, the directors of acclaimed Nat Geo documentary “La 92” on the L.A. riots, were consultants on the series.
The meeting in June between current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump made global headlines. “Inside North Korea’s Dynasty” goes further back to tell the story of Kim’s predecessors: his father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather and the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung. The Kims have ruled the country for more than 70 years. Using secret audio recordings from inside North Korea,...
U.K.-based 72 Films is producing the four-part factual series, titled “Inside North Korea’s Dynasty,” which has been a year in the making. Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, the directors of acclaimed Nat Geo documentary “La 92” on the L.A. riots, were consultants on the series.
The meeting in June between current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump made global headlines. “Inside North Korea’s Dynasty” goes further back to tell the story of Kim’s predecessors: his father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather and the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung. The Kims have ruled the country for more than 70 years. Using secret audio recordings from inside North Korea,...
- 10/22/2018
- by Stewart Clarke
- Variety Film + TV
With AFI Fest just a few weeks away, film-festival season is nearly over for the year. In addition to Venice, Telluride and Toronto, another fest recently concluded: the 15th annual Pyongyang International Film Festival, to which the New York Times sent a correspondent. 60 movies from 21 countries comprised this year’s selection, with with 11 of them vying for the Best Torch Award.
Read More: Tricking the Government: How to Shoot a Documentary in North Korea
The main criterion for winning said prize, according to the Nyt: “how well they symbolized the festival’s official theme — ‘Independence, Peace and Friendship’ — and whether they articulated the ideology of juche, or self-reliance, developed by the country’s founding father, Kim Il-sung.” Kim Jong-il, the country’s Dear Leader who passed away five years ago, was a known cinephile, even going so far as to kidnap a South Korean filmmaker and actress so that they...
Read More: Tricking the Government: How to Shoot a Documentary in North Korea
The main criterion for winning said prize, according to the Nyt: “how well they symbolized the festival’s official theme — ‘Independence, Peace and Friendship’ — and whether they articulated the ideology of juche, or self-reliance, developed by the country’s founding father, Kim Il-sung.” Kim Jong-il, the country’s Dear Leader who passed away five years ago, was a known cinephile, even going so far as to kidnap a South Korean filmmaker and actress so that they...
- 10/19/2016
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Handsomely crafted and executed with skillful action sequences, Operation Chromite tells the parallel stories of General Douglas MacArthur’s titular mission, designed to cut off North Korea’s supply line to the South and the formation of South Korean’s X-Ray intelligence unit. Condensing what could have made for a mini-series into a 110 minutes, the film hints at what could have been: further relationships between the X-Ray unit and their estranged families torn apart by an enemy within. Emotional beats, although present (and occasionally on-the-nose), largely take a backseat to the strategy of winning and some longing for a unified home.
Being a Korean production, director John H. Lee provides homegrown stars more screen time than Liam Neeson’s MacArthur, who gives tactical support, directing Un forces to the high seas to take back Incheon in September 1950. Faced with a choice of doubling down on what he views as a...
Being a Korean production, director John H. Lee provides homegrown stars more screen time than Liam Neeson’s MacArthur, who gives tactical support, directing Un forces to the high seas to take back Incheon in September 1950. Faced with a choice of doubling down on what he views as a...
- 8/12/2016
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
North Korean propaganda is so ripe for satire that its darker ramifications are often lost in the laughter. “Under the Sun” literally puts them in closeup, as Russian filmmaker Vitaly Manskiy’s gripping experimental documentary follows an eight-year-old child struggling within the constraints of the country’s suffocating ideology.
Ostensibly an authorized project showcasing the state’s ebullient youth, “Under the Sun” was shot from a script provided by the regime, and footage was subjected to daily scrutiny. But Manskiy nonetheless manages to fashion this material into an ominous indictment of the country’s brainwashing tactics and absurd self-regard, mostly by just letting the camera roll. The insanity speaks for itself.
Read More: Beyond ‘The Interview’: 6 Movies About North Korea You Can Watch Right Now
The scenario for “Under the Sun” contains the flimsiest of plots: Petite young Zin-Mi endures a series of routines in the process of joining the Children’s Union,...
Ostensibly an authorized project showcasing the state’s ebullient youth, “Under the Sun” was shot from a script provided by the regime, and footage was subjected to daily scrutiny. But Manskiy nonetheless manages to fashion this material into an ominous indictment of the country’s brainwashing tactics and absurd self-regard, mostly by just letting the camera roll. The insanity speaks for itself.
Read More: Beyond ‘The Interview’: 6 Movies About North Korea You Can Watch Right Now
The scenario for “Under the Sun” contains the flimsiest of plots: Petite young Zin-Mi endures a series of routines in the process of joining the Children’s Union,...
- 7/6/2016
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
[[tmz:video id="0_jm1f3mta"]] Despite nuclear tensions, a group of American runners traveled to North Korea this past weekend to compete in the Pyongyang marathon ... and TMZ Sports has the incredible footage. It all went down on Saturday -- when 1,000 foreign runners from all over the world gathered in front of roughly 70,000 people at Rungrado 1st of May Stadium ... the largest stadium in the world. One of those people was Brian Sloan -- an American entrepreneur who created the...
- 4/14/2016
- by TMZ Staff
- TMZ
We present the winners of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hkiff).
Young Cinema Competition
Firebird Award
Life After Life by Zhang Hanyi – Hong Kong | 2016 – 80 min.
The spirit of a deceased mother takes over her son’s body in order to oversee the task of replanting a very important tree, only after which it will be able to leave the earthly limits.
Jury Prize
Tomcat by Händl Klaus – Austria | 2016 – 114 min.
Andreas and Stefan lead a happy life: Together with their beloved tomcat Moses, they live in a beautiful old house in Vienna’s vineyards. They work as a musician and as a scheduler in the same orchestra and they love their large circle of friends. An unexpected and inexplicable outburst of violence suddenly shakes up the relationship and calls everything into question – the blind spot that resides in all of us.
Documentary Competition
Firebird Award
Behemoth by Zhao Liang – Hong Kong | 2015 – 90 min.
Young Cinema Competition
Firebird Award
Life After Life by Zhang Hanyi – Hong Kong | 2016 – 80 min.
The spirit of a deceased mother takes over her son’s body in order to oversee the task of replanting a very important tree, only after which it will be able to leave the earthly limits.
Jury Prize
Tomcat by Händl Klaus – Austria | 2016 – 114 min.
Andreas and Stefan lead a happy life: Together with their beloved tomcat Moses, they live in a beautiful old house in Vienna’s vineyards. They work as a musician and as a scheduler in the same orchestra and they love their large circle of friends. An unexpected and inexplicable outburst of violence suddenly shakes up the relationship and calls everything into question – the blind spot that resides in all of us.
Documentary Competition
Firebird Award
Behemoth by Zhao Liang – Hong Kong | 2015 – 90 min.
- 4/6/2016
- by Sebastian Nadilo
- AsianMoviePulse
I haven’t traveled all I have to Buenos Aires and back to tell you about how this festival, alongside Mar del Plata and Valdivia (this last one in Chile), form the triad of the most important festivals of Latin America, because if you know about it, you know about it. People that have travelled to Argentina for the past 17 years in April have felt the presence of cinema in the streets—and Buenos Aires is a big city. The importance of a festival that brings over 300 titles, some of them for the first time crossing an ocean, is fundamental for the Latino viewer, as well for those who want to make the effort and come to see the movies that play here. On a closer look, what plays here may seem to be eclectic at times, it is purely due to what seems to be the motto of the festival: discovery.
- 6/8/2015
- by Jaime Grijalba Gómez
- MUBI
Kim Jong Un is shaking up his style, and we think we know who inspired his new hairdo. The supreme leader of North Korea became the talk of the Internet when he displayed a fuller, flatter and taller hairstyle during a politburo meeting in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Like most things involving the dictator, the circumstances surrounding the bold new look remain a mystery, but we couldn't help but notice that it looks oddly similar to the "flat top" haircut that was popularized in the '90s by stars like Will Smith and Kid from Kid 'n Play. We know that...
- 2/19/2015
- by Maria Mercedes Lara, @maria_mercedes
- PEOPLE.com
Kim Jong Un is shaking up his style, and we think we know who inspired his new hairdo. The supreme leader of North Korea became the talk of the Internet when he displayed a fuller, flatter and taller hairstyle during a politburo meeting in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Like most things involving the dictator, the circumstances surrounding the bold new look remain a mystery, but we couldn't help but notice that it looks oddly similar to the "flat top" haircut that was popularized in the '90s by stars like Will Smith and Kid from Kid 'n Play. We know that...
- 2/19/2015
- by Maria Mercedes Lara, @maria_mercedes
- PEOPLE.com
The Peter Blum Gallery in New York is hosting an essential exhibition through October 18 of photographs by Chris Marker. Taken in North Korea in 1957, the works in the show were reprinted digitally and mounted in 2009. According to the gallery, several of the images were digitally manipulated by Chris Marker, while most were printed in their original iteration. (Marker's predilection for subtle and not so subtle digital manipulation is apparent in his photo exhibit Passengers, which in 2011 also showed at Peter Blum.) The gallery was kind enough to let us share several of the exhibit's photographs, as well as reproduce an essay Marker wrote about visiting North Korea.
In 1957, I had the opportunity to join a group of French journalists "invited" to visit North Korea. I would only realize later what a unique opportunity that was. The four years following the war (a conflict soberly described by General Bradley as the "wrong war,...
In 1957, I had the opportunity to join a group of French journalists "invited" to visit North Korea. I would only realize later what a unique opportunity that was. The four years following the war (a conflict soberly described by General Bradley as the "wrong war,...
- 9/23/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
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