Australian filmmaker's new source of inspiration: North Korean propaganda

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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Sat, September 23, 2023 | 17:14

Films

Australian filmmaker's new source of inspiration: North Korean propaganda

Posted : 2018-09-10 18:24

Updated : 2018-09-12 15:37

Filmmaker Anna Broinowski, center, speaks to a North Korean director in this photo taken in North Korea in September 2012. / Courtesy of DocForest

By Park Jin-hai

Anna Broinowski, an Australian film director, who traveled to North Korea in 2012 to learn Pyongyang-style propaganda filmmaking which resulted in her 2013 comic documentary "Aim High in Creation," visited Seoul prior to her film's release in the country.

"Back in 2010, I started to read this book (The Cinema and Directing by Kim Jong-il) and the minute I read it, I was fascinated. For me, even though Kim Jong-il wrote a book about how to make a social propaganda movie, you can tell how much he loved Hollywood cinema. I found that very interesting," said Broinowski during her press conference in Seoul, Monday.

"Here was a dictator whose job was overthrowing capitalism. He loved Elizabeth Taylor movies and James Bond. He used all the techniques of Hollywood thrillers and rom-coms and monster movies to make his own style of his filmmaking."

At the time in 2010, there were multinational companies in her homeland that upped their propaganda for the development of coal seam gas, towards the Austrian residents concerned about its threats to the environment and communities.

With no big budget to speak of, the director decided to do something unusual to stop the gas mine. "There are a lot of very expensive commercials in Australia that say coal seam gas is good, coal seams are green: western propaganda… What if I make a film Kim Jong-il's style _ his films are very powerful and influential _ is this like cinematic kryptonite to stop the gas mine."

The award-winning documentary filmmaker and author became the first Westerner to earn full access to one of the most reclusive regime's film industry. She and producer Lizzette Atkins had stayed in Pyongyang for 21 days from September, 2012, interviewed famous North Korean film directors including Lee Gwan-am and actress Yun Su-gyong. When she came back to Sydney, she shot the short film "The Gardener" sticking to the late North Korean leader's manifesto, and the full length film "Aim High" documents the whole process.

When she told the Australian cast and crew that they would make North Korean style film, they said it was not going to work. "If you look at the short film "The Gardener," it would never work in the west. By itself it is very hard-fisted, dogmatic and boring, because it's old fashioned," she said. "It's true to the rules of this book, that's what we wanted to make. Yet we wanted to be true to the rules of this book, without going into parody because that would be disrespectful of North Korean filmmakers who have advised us."

Her mission as a filmmaker filming in North Korea was to "humanize" North Korean filmmakers. When she first made the "Aim High" creation, there were only three stories allowed about North Korea in the western media, she says: it is the land of prisons and starvation; an evil brainwashing empire with its citizens having no control over their lives; and a backwards enemy state, a member of the Axis of Evil.

"I'm a filmmaker and my message is one of humanitarianism. Building a cultural bridge about a country that is really seen just in black and white by the West and I wanted to find the color," she said.
When she showed the film in America, she says it was heartwarming. "American people come up to me and say, Oh my god they are people, just like us. So next time they watch FOX news, they're hearing we maybe need to do more war games, they are going to think of human beings that are perhaps going to be victims of that. If I've helped change the perception on that small level, I think I've done the part that I've tried to do."

jinhai@ktimes.com