German documentary shows images of a North Korean 'comrade projectionist'
Jan Creutzenberg (RhusHeesen)
It is the movie directors who shoot the pictures, but it is the projectionists who show them. They are the ones who give the films to the audience -- and thus secure an audience, a community of moviegoers. "Comrades in Dreams" shows us some of them, each one belonging to a very distinct culture of cinema.
Uli Gaulke, a German film-maker and projectionist himself, shot a moving documentary on four continents: Anup Jagdale continues a family tradition touring India with a mobile movie-tent; Penny Tefertiller runs a local cinema in Big Piney, Wyoming, a village contradicting its name; three young men -- Lassane, Luc and Zakaria -- try hard to fill their rented open-air theatre in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso; and "comrade projectionist" Han Yong-Sil is responsible for showing films in the communal cultural center of Chongsan-Ri, a town located in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). All of the protagonists as well as their various stories and anecdotes are interesting and touching; however, in this review I will focus on the segments depicting North Korea.
One early scene shows -- as a film in a film -- a winged horse revolving around itself, the unfamiliar symbol of the North Korean production company Choson Younghwa, followed by brief scenes from a propaganda-romance by the name of "Uri Mat" (Our Flavour): A young girl does not want to marry the reputable Kim'chi-researcher her parents have chosen for her, but when she meets him in the end she falls in love and accepts the tradition. This is the stuff dreams are made of in the world's most remote country.
Han Yong-Sil is a model citizen living in a model village. Chongsan-Ri is a legendary place to the Juche ideology: It was here that Kim Il-Sung during one of his countless "on-the-spot-guidances" developed the main principles for the party and state cadres' working style: the so-called "Method of Chongsan-ri". That is the reason that many tourists and filmteams are brought here. But in this scenery of idyllic country life there are real people living. One of them is Han Yong-Sil, a dark-haired woman in her early fifties.
When she was young, she wanted to become a movie star. Now she is getting the latest movies from Pyongyang to show them in her commune. Not only tearjerkers, but also educational films on topics such as irrigation and gardening -- and each one of them is a success. "When everybody has been at work today, everybody will come to the cinema", she comments as people arrive for a screening, well ordered with their respective workgroup.
Although Mrs Han is praised constantly by her colleague, her joy appears to be shadowed by loneliness, a lack of passion -- passion she is looking for in movies like "Uri Mat". Later she tells how she met her husband when he was lingering in front of the cinema, reminding her of the espionage movies she had seen. When a flood threatened to destroy the copies of a new film she had promised to show, he saved her -- and the film reels. But now he is gone, delegated to Baekdusan, the worshipped mountain of the mythical foundation of Korea and also the supposed birthplace of Kim Jong-il, where he is doing construction work.
What is real, what is drama? Director Uli Gaulke, for whom "it was all about trying to get to the bottom of this deadlocked image of North Korea", believes strongly in the charisma of his leading lady: "All the staging and the affectation around us could be swept away with a single bat of Mrs Hang's eyelids". Under constant surveillance by officials he tried -- successfully, in his opinion -- "to show a little humanity behind the facade of steely discipline".
After seeing "Comrades in Dreams", I talked to Dr. Holmer Brochlos, director of the Institute for Korean Studies at the Freie Universitat. Having lived in Pyongyang for several years, Mr Brochlos acted as an interpreter for the film crew during the shooting in North Korea in August 2005.
Being asked about the reasons of NK government officials allowing the shooting of "Comrades in Dreams" (and films like, for example, Daniel Gordon's documentaries on the Arirang Mass Games and NK's national soccer team) Mr Brochlos recognizes signs of the regime's relaxing relationships with the outside world. "Still, the constant need for foreign currency probably is the main reason", he suspects.
Concerning the sincerity of Han Yong-Sil's expressed emotions, he pointed out that, as a member of the first generation of postwar North Koreans, she had spent all her life in the DPRK. It is reasonable to presume that she has internalized the promoted ideals of Juche society because she never was exposed to anything contradicting them. Therefore, Mr Brochlos concludes, "according to her dispositions she is acting quite naturally".
Maybe this is another reason for the fascination mentioned above: Observed from a post-modern world of constantly constructed, de- and re-constructed personal representations, North Korea may serve as a untouchable counter-world, a last resort of fully rooted identities, as artificial as they may appear. And the occasional glimpses behind the curtain, like the ones offered by "Comrades in Dreams", are grist for the mill.
While I watched the documentation, I had the uncomfortable feeling of acting like a voyeur, though. After all, what is going on in North Korea is more than "a play called social realism" (Philipp Buhler in a review of the film for Berliner Zeitung, Jan. 3, 2008) - a full-sized dictatorship is controlling the world view of millions of people. The fact that only heavily cut pieces (and only scenes shot in North Korea) of "Comrades in Dreams" were shown at the Pyongyang International Film Festival underlines this fact.
Another banned film is "Titanic". In "Comrades in Dreams" the Hollywood-blockbuster serves as a connection between the different cinema cultures. While being a huge hit in America and Africa, Indian audiences did not like it very much (too much water, not enough plot). In North Korea "Titanic" is virtually unwatchable, at least for ordinary citizens like Mrs Han: "She has been told all her life that Americans are monsters, therefore we cannot expose her to any movie from the hated country", Uli Gaulke learned from the supervising officials.
For the last scene of his film, he managed to recreate the hallmark shot, anyway: Han Yong-Sil standing at The Bow of a ship, just like Kate Winslet and Leonardo diCaprio. The pleasure boat "Pyongyang 1" is not passing icebergs but the Juche Tower, 170-meter-high symbol of representational gigantism. A contest in staging seems to be an adequate conclusion to a film that presents some more glimpses into North Korea.
"Comrades in Dreams", Germany 2006, 106 minutes, director: Uli Gaulke.
The film can be seen in several cinemas in Germany.
The official website (Open the link in English) of production company Flying Moon
includes additional information as well as an interview with the
director (in English and German).
English 
