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| Michal Prochazka |
The Korean film industry needs bigger support for independent film production, a Czech film producer and a critic said.
Michal Prochazka, a producer at Maurfilm based in Prague, Czech Republic, said, "It's a problem of system of support and distribution of independent works."
The film industry isn't an exception to conglomerate domination in Korea. A rising name is film distributor CJ Entertainment.
Their focus lies so much in commercial success, therefore "you don't do courageous and risky projects," he said cautiously.
Prochazka isn't a total stranger to the Korean film industry.
He has been a regular to the Busan Film Festival. Currently, he is living in Seoul, giving lectures at universities, conducting research on history of the Korean film industry, learning about the Korean culture and interacting with people in the film industry.
Earlier this month, he organized a small film festival at the Seoul Cinematheque, screening Czech films from the 1960s.
He said the Czechoslovakian films in the 1960s carry significant implications.
"We call it Czechoslovak New Wave. It was cultural emancipation movement that came after the silence of the 1950s."
It was still Czechoslovakia, and it was a communist state then with its regime depriving people's freedoms which eventually culminated into the Prague Spring in 1968. According to him it marked the tipping point of resistance because essentially "The new wave revealed artificial images imposed by the communist regime."
Prochazka is into animation production, and is hoping to find as many future collaborators as possible in Korea. It's not an easy task, he said, given a struggling environment for independent animation production worldwide.
Independent animation producers have to compete with well-financed 3D Hollywood features, for example, he said.
Also the notion that animation is for children is holding the industry back. He admitted that children are still the biggest consumers of animation, but there's a potential for widening viewership. "Look around the walls, advertisement, TVs, animation is everywhere. It has become a tool for communication."
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