Interesting article here from the LA Times’s Barbara Demick about her trip to the recent Pyongyang International Film Festival. I wish there were a few more photos, but I’m sure one takes what they’re given when covering a film festival in Pyongyang.

After some run-of-the-mill “closed country,” “no Internet,” no “BlackBerrys,” she reveals a few tidbits:

He says filmmakers like to attend Pyongyang’s festival despite the limited deal-making opportunities because of the passion of the crowds: “Their emotional responses are very direct and natural. They don’t anticipate the endings of the film. This is something you can’t see in Europe, and it is very refreshing.”

The Ministry of Culture, which oversees the festival, pays for filmmakers to attend. Most come from European countries that have diplomatic relations with North Korea; others come from China.

Tickets are usually distributed through workplaces and universities, often through the ruling Workers’ Party, but many end up being resold by scalpers.

One funny line is she notes a Austrian-German production “The Counterfeiters” was one of the films showing.

Demick also takes a tour to an old North Korean film studio on the outskirts of town (photo above).

A popular attraction for both foreigners and North Koreans are the film studios on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Visitors wandered through mock-ups of 1950s South Korean and Japanese streets, or at least a communist propagandist’s vision of them: girlie bars, cheap cabarets, a blood bank where the poor could sell their blood to the capitalist oppressors, and a pet food company. (North Koreans used to think keeping pets was a Western indulgence.)

North Korean visitors seemed more interested in a fortress where they could try on costumes of ancient Korean warriors and get their photographs taken. It didn’t appear that any filmmaking was taking place, although a tour guide insisted that the studios are still used.

She doesn’t note if there were any South Korean actresses or Japanese citizens still chained up at the old lot, but they may have been stashed behind the scenes.

Ahem.

Here’s my favorite part:

The guide, Choi Heon Yul, boasted that Kim had visited 500 times to offer his personal guidance, and once climbed a tower with a camera to make sure a scene was correctly filmed.

I’m sure. I hope it was the Tower of the Juche Idea. King Jong.