Comrade Kim Goes Flying
VIEW EVENT DETAILSNorth Korean Fiction Film Screening and meet-the-director Q&A
Drinks reception at 6.30pm
Screening at 7pm
Q&A at 8.25pm
Close at 8.45pm
Comrade Kim Goes Flying
2012/Belgium, UK, North Korea
Directors:
Belgium - Anja Daelemans
UK - Nicholas Bonner
North Korea - Kim Gwang Hun
81 minutes/ In Korean with English subtitles
Comrade Kim Yong Mi is a 28 year-old coal miner who lives with her father and grandmother in a small village in the North Korean countryside. When she was young her mother supported her dream to become an acrobat, but when her mother died, her father wanted her to concentrate on her work in the coalmine and forget her childish dreams of flying…
Comrade Kim Goes Flying is the first fiction film with an all North Korean cast, co-produced with western partners and completely edited abroad. This is a film that could be appreciated by a world audience but it also provides something fresh and different for the North Korean public. It was the producers’ intention to make an entertaining ‘feel good’ film centered on a strong female lead and to deliver a fun, light and romantic film with young good-looking actors that is seldom found in the North Korean film scene.
This film is an international coproduction, with the North Korean side providing the script writers, cast, crew and orchestra and the western partners providing the hardware (camera, lights, grip and sound equipment) and taking charge of post-production. One of the directors, Nicholas Bonner, will appear at the post-screening Q&A.
Nicholas Bonner was trained first as a countryside ranger, and then as a landscape architect. He never imagined he would spend 20 years of his life living in Beijing and visiting North Korea nearly every month.
After a study visit to Asia in 1993, he became so fascinated with North Korea that together with his colleague Joshua Green, they set up Koryo Group - a company specializing in tourism, sport, and cultural exchanges with North Korea. In 2001, Daniel Gordon approached him about a documentary on the 1966 North Korean World Cup football heroes who defeated the favored Italian team by a score of 1-0, but the North Korean team was never seen again. The players were ultimately found and the film entitled The Game of Their Lives was made in 2002 based on that incredible story. The film took the North Korean players back to the UK to visit the exact site of their historic victory. Two additional North Korean documentaries followed - A State of Mind (2004) and Crossing the Line (2006).