[imText1]Winter Butterfly, the directorial debut from defector Kim Gyu Min, opened in 7 cinemas across South Korea last Thursday. It is being shown mainly in small indie cinemas, though it made brief appearances at a number of bigger theatres at the beginning of the week. One of those few locations that is showing it is CGV at Technomart in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, but unfortunately that entire building experienced a sharp drop off in clientele after mysterious tremors led to an emergency evacuation last Tuesday. Perhaps for that reason, the film was watched by only 200 people there in its first five days.
Despite these limitations, Kim, who hails from North Hwanghae Province, seems happy as he meets The Daily NK at the offices of the new film’s distributor, SmileCine.
“I’ve had lots of calls of support since the film opened five days ago. Most of them have been encouraging phone calls saying ‘I enjoyed it’ or ‘You really captured the situation in North Korea’. A priest from one church even asked whether he could show it to his congregation,” Kim says with a smile.
“As a director, my hope is that everyone in Korea who is over 15, meaning old enough to see it, does so, but even if just a few people do, then they’ll get to know the real situation in North Korea and tell other people about it, and the level of interest in North Korean society will gradually increase,” Kim points out, adding, “The actual number of watchers isn’t important.”
The film Kim originally planned to make as his debut would not have had this much trouble attracting viewers; it was a commercial film and had already been written and cast. Kim says it was his guilty conscience that ultimately forced him to chart a new course and turn a scenario he came up with in his university days called ‘Illusion’ into the opening scene of Winter Butterfly.
It was what he calls his ‘defector’s destiny’ that caused it, his need not to forget the reality his North Korean brethren live in that surpassed his desire to get his own name out.
Kim describes the film as “A true story about what is happening to the north of the Republic of Korea. People in South Korea have this kind of filter that they apply to North Korea; they won’t accept any more stories about the situation than their filter allows. Through this film, I wanted to transmit the real story to them intact.”
“Why did the media here make such a fuss about Kim Jong Il visiting China,” he suddenly asks. “I guess they don’t have any interest in the ‘clover boy’ who starved to death. I just wanted to tell the stories of the twenty million people who are suffering under this man whom the people in South Korea are so interested in, Kim Jong Il.”
“I’ve heard that sometimes, very rarely, a butterfly falls under an illusion about which season it is, so comes out of its cocoon in winter. I saw the people of North Korea in that image,” he says, turning poetic. “If they had been born in South Korea they could have had the chance of a happy life. Instead, like a winter butterfly, they die without having a chance to flap their wings, only because of where they were born.”
Kim explains that he set as his objective the projection of a realistic image of North Korean society, and asserts that 70% of the film is made up of things he experienced and saw for himself. His meticulous direction portrays outdoor markets, childhood tree felling, official indifference, and all in highly believable detail.
This was no easy task, as Kim laments, saying, “There were lots of scenes where Jin Ho, the main character, goes to the mountains to gather firewood, but we couldn’t find a mountain in this country without trees. Eventually and with great difficulty we did find one, but we couldn’t convince them to let us film there because it was a target range for artillerymen to practice with live ammunition. So, in terms of mountain scenes, we couldn’t perfectly recreate North Korea.”
At the other extreme, he says he rates the scene where Jin Ho’s mother prays beneath portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and begs them to save her son as the most powerful in the film.
“I think through that prayer scene, people can get a readout on how North Korean people actually think. I used to think Kim Il Sung was God, too. That’s North Korean people precisely,” he stresses.
Conversely, Winter Butterfly is so realistic in its portrayal that many people may find it hard to believe, perhaps thinking that surely North Korea is not really that bad. There is particular controversy about the ending, which is likely to shock people, to put it mildly.
On that, Kim explains, “I made the movie with that ending in mind right from the start. Even the actors found it hard to come to terms with. Watchers are astonished that not even the great love of a family is immune to the terrible circumstances of a place like North Korea. For that reason, a few people seem repulsed by the movie.”
Kim made the film hoping to spread the word about the reality of life in North Korea, but he is now feeling the limits of what can be achieved by non-commercial films, which don’t tend to draw in huge crowds. For that reason, he identifies it as the task of films about North Korea to unearth topics that can grab viewers.
Kim has now finished the screenplay for another film, Last Mission, which he hopes to turn into a commercial film as a means of increasing his access to viewers. He says the next step is to find financing. It is the story of a member of North Korean Special Forces who infiltrates the South, but it ends in a journey of self-discovery.
At the same time, he says there is a subtitled version of Winter Butterfly, one which he plans to take to as many international film festivals as possible. He says, “I am planning to release it in the Japanese and U.S. movie markets in February next year.”
For a man who has only just taken his first steps as a director, it is an exciting time for Kim. Only time will tell whether he can achieve his dual aspirations; becoming a box office success and a storyteller, revealing the reality of North Korea to the world.
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