North Korean Cinema in Shanghai – Sunday January 8th

An evening of North Korean cinematic delight at The Apartment in Shanghai on Sunday January 8th, 2012

Simon Cockerell, General Manager of Koryo Tours will be presenting an evening of North Korean cinematic delight at The Apartment in Shanghai on Sunday January 8th. The DPRK as it is officially known has been all over the news of late so if you’ve been wondering what all the fuss is about then why not go along and experience a snippet of this fascinating country through two very different, and very interesting films as well as some short clips of North Korean TV propaganda commonly seen in the country but very rarely in the outside world.

Simon will be on hand to present the films and answer any questions about them and about the experience of visiting North Korea, and he hopes to see you there!

Place: The Apartment – 3/F, 47 Yongfu Lu, near Fuxing Xi Lu永福路47号3楼, 近复兴西路

Tel: (021) 6437 9478

Date: Sunday 8th January

Time: Please arrive by 18:00, seating is limited and the first film will start at 18:30

Cost: No cover charge (Free!), and there will be happy hour pricing on drinks (2 for 1) and burgers

Here are the films that will be shown:

Our Flavour (2003) – A DPRK rom-com (!) about the struggles to match-make in the modern world. The film is very notable for its reasonably honest portrayal of wealth disparity in different Pyongyang families as well as addressing the dangers of foreign cultural influence on Koreans who spend too much time with tourists! Two families are brought together through romance but are their differences too much to bear? One is a worldly bunch who use their relative wealth to buy imported goods, use foreign words, and look outside for inspiration. The other family favours the Korean ‘flavour’ in everything, can they reconcile their different ways? Or can a western-influenced tour guide and a kimchi specialist never really understand each other?

Crossing the Line (2005) – Third documentary produced by Koryo Tours, this documentary tells the previously untold story of James Joseph Dresnok, an American who has spent the last five decades living in Pyongyang, North Korea. In 1961 Dresnok, a young solder in the US army at the time, deserted his post on the southern side of the DMZ which separates North and South Korea to this day, he simply walked across the largest minefield in the world and disappeared into the arms of the communist enemy. Over 40 years later a western film crew tracked him down. We hear Dresnok’s story in his own words as well as the stories of the other American soldiers who traded the west for life behind the bamboo curtain in the 1960s, the bizarre stories of their wives and children still living in North Korea and what happened when the only other surviving American defector in North Korea was offered the chance to leave while the film was in production. Stories like this come around once in a lifetime and Dresnok’s tale is about the most fascinating and unlikely tale to come out of the secretive and enigmatic Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in
a long time