Communist North Korea rolled out its version of the red carpet this week when the reclusive state opened its biannual international film festival, allowing its masses to watch forbidden foreign films.
Movies are near to the heart of leader Kim Jong-il, a fan of Daffy Duck, Steven Spielberg and Elizabeth Taylor, who is thought to have a library of about 20,000 films that includes all of the James Bond movies, intelligence sources have said.
Kim, who is suspected of suffering a stroke in recent weeks, usually does not attend the event. But his state’s propaganda machine typically runs a news item at the time of the festival praising him as a “genius in cinematic art.”
In state media reports late on Wednesday monitored in Seoul, the North said the festival “was opened with due ceremony,” which included an all-women marching band. Instead of stars in designer clothes, it brought ageing cadres in dark suits to the stage.
In recent years, the North has screened about 70 films from about 30 countries at the festival, that include its own movies as well as films from Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific region.
North Koreans can normally be thrown in jail for watching unauthorized foreign movies.
But during the 10-day festival, they have seen films such as Bend it Like Beckham and Whale Rider, which is a far cry from the home-grown product that is heavily steeped in its state’s communist ideology.
In other festival news, US actress Meryl Streep will receive a lifetime achievement award at the San Sebastian film festival which got underway yesterday in northeastern Spain with 15 movies in competition for the best movie award.
She will receive an honorary Donosti — which means San Sebastian in the Basque language — along with Spanish actor Javier Bardem who earlier this year won his first Oscar for his supporting role in No Country for Old Men.
Streep has won two Oscars — in 1980 for Kramer vs Kramer and in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice — and been nominated 12 other times.
Organizers expect some 200,000 people to attend the 56th edition of the festival, the oldest and most prestigious event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world, over its 10 days.
This year’s festival will feature films from all five continents and fewer movies from Latin America.
“We have plenty of established directors this year like Kim Ki-duk, Kore-Eda, Christophe Honore or Michael Winterbottom,” the director of the festival, Mikel Olaciregui, said
“This year, given the criticism received by the Venice Film Festival, we feel we have a potent and competitive festival. Maybe we were better at convincing directors to take part,” he added.
Among the films in competition for the festival’s Golden Shell for best film is British director Michael Winterbottom’s Genova starring Colin Firth as a widower who takes his two daughters to Italy after the death of their mother in a car crash.
The festival will also feature retrospectives of the works of British filmmaker Terence Davies, director of Distant Voices, Still Lives, of the comedies of 93-year-old Italian filmmaker Mario Monicelli and of Japanese post-war film noir.
Last year’s Golden Shell for best film went to Hong Kong-born Wayne Wang’s (王穎) A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
Germany has nominated a true-life film about the 1970s Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang for an Oscar as best foreign movie of the year, its film export board said on Tuesday, just hours before the VIP premiere of the movie in Munich.
Launched under the German title Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, the movie describes the rise and fall of a group of urban terrorists who conducted bank robberies, kidnappings and assassinations while dreaming of a communist revolution in West Germany.
The initial nomination for the February 2009 Oscars was made by a panel of judges appointed by the German Films board. About 100 countries are expected to make similar nominations.
A short list of five foreign films from round the world will be selected as final nominees by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in January, with the winner to be announced Feb. 22, 2009.
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