Bizarre movies have always held a strong fascination for me, so too the places where such movies come from. Having spent years living in the bowels of the Lower East Side and arranging screenings for the rabid assaults of the New York Cinema of Transgression, and after devoting myself to the seedier sides of Tokyo and the works of the Japanese “Cyberpunk” radicals, North Korea felt like an obvious place to go next. A hostile half of a partitioned peninsula, it was governed like the compound of a messianic sect by movie-mad, booze-swilling semi-god leader, and producing movies with titles like The Sea of Blood, Woman Warrior of Koryo and The Women Volunteers-what else could I wish for?
But one cannot simply go and buy a ticket to travel there; North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world and will allow in very few visitors.
Luck was on my side, however. At the Berlin Film Festival in February 1999, I mentioned my pipe dream about visiting North Korea to a friend who ran an independent cinema in Berlin. To my surprise he replied: “You want to meet North Korean film people? Some North Koreans come to our office a couple of times every week, who we help in getting Western films for screenings at their embassy-or whatever else they do with them. Nobody knows for sure what they’re up to.”
As it turned out, the visitor to which my friend referred was the Secretary for Economic Affairs of the “Office for the Protection of the Interests of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Berlin”-the diplomatic bureau that North Korea maintains in Germany. He would meet regularly with the cinema organisers, presenting them with a fresh list of film titles on each occasion. He never knew what the movies were about, nor who had made them or any other details, but it was always very urgent business. “Get us 35mm prints of the film,” he would say. “Money isn’t important, and it doesn’t matter what language the films are in. We want to show them in our embassy.”
Without fail the prints would be returned after two weeks, and the rental fee would be settled expediently and without fuss. Were the films really for screening at the embassy? It was anyone’s guess. But considering how the Great Leader back home was an ardent movie buff, and that the primary concern for the Secretary for Economic Affairs appeared to be locating pics like Air Wolf and Jackie Chan’s Police Story 1 and 2, there had to be more to it than that. Berlin is a city in which it is very easy to find film prints of all kinds. Perhaps the North Koreans were using the embassy as a front to get prints for the private film screenings of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung?
Only days after returning home to Nuremberg, I got a call from the cinema in Berlin. “We told the North Koreans about your plans,” my friend relayed to me down the line. “They have some high-ranking official here in Berlin right now. He wants to see you. Get here as quickly as possible.”
I did. The North Korean officials were Mr. Paek, Vice President of the Korea Film Export and Import Corporation, and his translator Mr. Kim. Accompanying them was Mr. U, the mysterious regular visitor to the cinema and hirer of films. It was a rather formal meeting. The North Koreans looked completely out of place in the sleek high-tech surrounds of the cinema office, wearing cheap ill-fitting suits and badges on their lapels that featured a picture of Kim Il Sung.
I told them about a recent tour I had made of European cinemas with a package of fourteen Japanese movies, and that my intention was hopefully to do likewise with a package of North Korean movies. But first, of course, I had to view some North Korea films to make a selection-and I had to visit North Korea. I couldn’t possibly introduce a programme of films to European audiences without having first been to the country of their origin. How would I answer questions from the press? How could I write programme notes on the films without a first-hand knowledge of their background and the society from which they emerged?
Finally, after much debating and many cups of coffee, the ambassadors for North Korea arrived at a decision. “Well,” announced Mr. Paek, “our international film festival takes place only once in every two years. This year, it doesn’t take place. But we can invite you to the Korea Film Show in September in Pyongyang. There, you can make your selection.”
