TITLE: Kim Jong-il and North Korean Films
SPEAKER: Suk-Young Kim
EVENT DATE: 06/26/2007
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Suk-Young Kim, a fellow at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, presents a program that provides insight on North Korean culture, politics and the leadership of Kim Jong-il titled "Kim Jong-il and North Korean Film."
The world's understanding of Kim Jong-il is often linked to his personal obsession with film, but little is known about how and why film serves as a window through which the outside world can glimpse the enigmatic North Korean leader. The talk explores Kim Jong-il's relationship with film on various levels, such as the filial duty to protect his father's legacy and desire to gain political capital through artistic achievement on both domestic and international fronts. Rarely seen film clips???selected from a wide variety of genres, such as political propaganda, family melodrama, musical, children's animation and Hong Kong-style martial arts films??? are shown.
Speaker Biography: Suk-Young Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Dramatic Art and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests span a wide range of academic disciplines, such as East Asian performance, gender and nationalism, Korean cultural studies, Russian literature and Slavic folklore. Her research has been acknowledged by the International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholar's Prize (2004), the American Society for Theater Research Fellowship (2006) and the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship (2006-07). She is currently working on a book project titled "Illusive Utopia: Theater and Film in North Korea," which explores how the state produced propaganda performances intersect with everyday life practice in North Korea. Another book project documents the testimony of a North Korean labor camp survivor.
