Pusan 2003

Food for Thought
by Dan Fainaru

The first thing that strikes a first time visitor to the Pusan Film Festival, is the surprisingly healthy state of the national film industry there. Not just the fact that they produce over 80 feature films a year or that they have reached an average attendance of over 300,000 per film. That would be amazing enough. It's much more than that. Korea seems right now to be the flavour of the year in many Asian territories that barely recognised its existence 5 years ago. A web site operator from Hong Kong, for instance, mentioned that while an occasional Korean film might have been released commercially there in the past, this year there will be at least 15, if not more. As for the international festivals and the international reputation that goes with them, not only have Korean films had a distinct presence in every self respecting film event in the world this year, but one of their pictures, Kim Ki-duk's "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring" could arguably be considered best film of the year, Asian, European or otherwise.

So what's the secret? While it would take a much longer and detailed analysis, there is one word that seems to be pretty much the key: quota. Despite its idyllic political relations with the US, Korea has withstood all the well-known, familiar pressures of the American industry, and with the full support at home, had installed a quota that provides for a substantial amount of time that every local commercial screen has to devote to the national film output. The result is evident if one walks the streets of Pusan. While in most other big city around the world, the most visible movie posters would advertise Hollywood products, usually the same ones everywhere, in Pusan and all over Korea, the most frequent posters in sight are for Korean films and the same thing is in evidence when one observes the average program of most multiplexes. Is it against all principles of free trade, is it undemocratic and an invasion of the right of every private citizen to be allowed to see everything he wants, without any impositions? To a certain extent, it probably is. However, the results of this policy can't really be ignored, and as for the invasion of private rights, one often wonders what happens to them when perusing the daily film diet of cinema exhibition in other countries of the world, whose range reaches from "Matrix" to "Lords of the Rings" with a touch of "Harry Potter". Is that really freedom of choice? Food for thought.

Dan Fainaru
© FIPRESCI 2003

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