North Korea opens its doors to foreign filmmakers

The policy is aimed at reviving the fortunes of the Stalinist state's once thriving movie business and will also enable North Korean films to reach overseas, according to Chinese filmmaker Piao Zun Xi, the director of the first foreign feature made in the reclusive country. |"North Korea is willing to participate actively in co-production activities," Piao told a meeting at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea's Southern Busan city.

"Kim Jong-Il is well known to be an avid film lover. (North Korea) wants to learn from other countries what is going on in the film sector," he said.

Piao, an ethnic Korean, has just finished making The Secret of Rikidozan about one of North Korea's most worshipped national heroes, champion professional wrestler Rikidozan. "This is the first film co-operation between China and North Korea," said Piao, who shot the film entirely in North Korea with Chinese and North Korean stars.

Kim Hyung-Joon, president of the Korean Motion Picture Producers Association, said he was excited about the possibilities raised for joint Korean productions. Joon said he had also heard North Korea's Dear Leader was gathering 200 foreign films for screening to audiences there who are usually denied access to overseas culture.

North Korean cinema was very strong in the 1970s, churning out movies that were lapped up by entertainment-starved Chinese audiences during the Cultural Revolution, Piao said. But famine and poverty led to the neglect of the industry which no longer had enough equipment to make international standard movies on its own, he said.

North Korean propaganda proclaims Rikidozan as the world's greatest ever wrestler and his death in 1963 was surrounded by claims that he was murdered because he brought shame on America and Japan by beating their wrestlers. Countless books and documentaries have been made about Rikidozan in his native North Korea.