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I just finished a fairly unusual book. On the Art of the Cinema, by Kim Jung Il. Yes, that's right, everyone's favorite communist dictator wrote a book on film criticism. (He also has one on the opera.)
The book is only 229 pages, but they don't always go easily. Here is an only slightly extreme example sentence: New miraculous and innovatory successes in creative work will be achieved continually if the creative workers are imbued with the unqualified revolutionary spirit which achieves the most brilliant of results by displaying total devotion and boundless creative energy, by regarding the great leader's instructions and the Party's policy as the letter of the law and remaining firmly determined to deny themselves all rest and even deny the right to die until they have fulfilled their revolutionary duty.
He is naturally rather obsessed with the propagation of communist ideology, specifically Juche, North Korea's homegrown Marxist fork. But if you can ignore that, or just laugh at it, it has a couple decent insights into filmmaking. Nothing revolutionary (sorry!), but not the insanely fascist and repressive dogma one might expect. There is a great respect for the creative process throughout the book. Artistic creation must be guided and molded to further the Party's cause, you see, but it must not simply be censored or repressed.
Better yet, if you can make the translation from 'Juche' to 'an ideology you care about', many of the suggestions make a lot more sense. It's actually an interesting problem, phrased that way. How to make a moral movie, for whatever value of moral you choose? His argument is simply that the movie itself must be made according to those morals, from the core of the script to the interactions between cast and crew. Impractical (says this degenerate capitalist), but not an awful idea.
In conclusion, DPRK remains a land of contrasts.
The book is only 229 pages, but they don't always go easily. Here is an only slightly extreme example sentence: New miraculous and innovatory successes in creative work will be achieved continually if the creative workers are imbued with the unqualified revolutionary spirit which achieves the most brilliant of results by displaying total devotion and boundless creative energy, by regarding the great leader's instructions and the Party's policy as the letter of the law and remaining firmly determined to deny themselves all rest and even deny the right to die until they have fulfilled their revolutionary duty.
He is naturally rather obsessed with the propagation of communist ideology, specifically Juche, North Korea's homegrown Marxist fork. But if you can ignore that, or just laugh at it, it has a couple decent insights into filmmaking. Nothing revolutionary (sorry!), but not the insanely fascist and repressive dogma one might expect. There is a great respect for the creative process throughout the book. Artistic creation must be guided and molded to further the Party's cause, you see, but it must not simply be censored or repressed.
Better yet, if you can make the translation from 'Juche' to 'an ideology you care about', many of the suggestions make a lot more sense. It's actually an interesting problem, phrased that way. How to make a moral movie, for whatever value of moral you choose? His argument is simply that the movie itself must be made according to those morals, from the core of the script to the interactions between cast and crew. Impractical (says this degenerate capitalist), but not an awful idea.
In conclusion, DPRK remains a land of contrasts.