Korea Północna - Noor Images

Pyongyang DPRK September 2014: The opening of the 14th Pyongyang International Film Festival at the Ponghwa Art Theatre. Pyongyang???s festival was founded in 1987, and has been held every two years since 1990. Held every two years, the Pyongyang International Film Festival offers North Koreans their only chance to see a wide array of foreign films on the big screen ??" from Britain, Germany and elsewhere (but not America). And it's the only time foreigners are allowed into North Korean theaters to watch movies alongside locals. The 14th PIFF consists of Feature Film Competition, Documentary and Short Film Competition, Special and Informative Screenings and Film Exchange. The festival hosted a programme, organised especially for foreign guests, of what they deemed to be classic films from North Korea???s 60-year history. Virtually all studios and archives were destroyed during the three years of the Korean War. After 1953, the studios had to be rebuilt from scratch. Like Stalin and Mao, Kim Il-sung extolled the propaganda value of cinema, and ordered films reflecting ??ssocialist reality??? to be made: ??sLike the leading article of the Party paper, the cinema should have great appeal and move ahead of the realities??S it should play a mobilising role in the revolutionary struggle.??? From the 1960s until the early 1990s, an average of 20 films were made each year, but it was frequently as many as 100. The Soviet Union and China supplied money and technology and, in turn, North Korean films were screened across the communist territories.