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There’s no doubt Jonathan H. KIM Hanmac Films is now the definitive expert in Chinese films. With the theatrical release of his Korea-China co-production film Making Family scheduled for this October, he has plans to produce 12 more co-production projects with China. These include the 6 projects he signed up for with China’s largest and most influential state-run film enterprise China Film Group Corporation(CFGC) and China’s Huace Film & TV who recently bought stakes in Korean film investment and distribution company Next World Entertainment(NEW), along with 6 more projects in script development.

 

 Making Family, his first venture into the Chinese market, stars Korea’s KIM Ha-neul and Mason Moon MOORHOUSE, China’s LEE Chi-ting, and is directed by Korea’s CHO Jin-mo of Suspicious Customers. This film is a comic melodrama about a boy born through sperm donation, who sets off to China in search of his biological father. Jonathan KIM is confident in his line-up, of which he says “We will have all these films ready in the next three years.”

 

 

We had to go with a 10-min promo instead of a full-length trailer for the project’s first showcase. We had to respond to CFGC’s urgent request, and although it wasn’t that satisfactory, I’m sure it was enough to convey the film’s concept. The child actor, well-known to the Korean audience as MOON Mason through his appearances on TV did a good job, and KIM Ha-neul showed great passion by learning her lines and performing in Chinese. The Chinese cast is relatively weak, but commercially, this film has many strong points. 

Did you have a co-production scheme for Making Family from the start?

 

The project was first proposed to me by a Korean film production company, and I was intrigued by the sensibility and structure of the story rather than the script itself. While we were revising the script, a co-production proposition came our way. And although our Chinese partner Media Vision China encountered a number of difficulties with the investment, we were finally able to start pre-production last October and principal photography in November. Like most co-productions, our investment shares were made up 70% by China and 30% by Korea.

 

 

Along with the film director, we brought our entire crew from Korea. But we had to face quite a few difficulties due to small and fundamental differences in each country’s systems such as laundry and accommodations. The pre-production period is quite short in China while shooting days are tight. This caused a number of unpredictable situations. Furthermore, there was an overload of cheap and simple-skilled, but unnecessary manpower on the set and with no official off-days, this put extreme pressure on our crew. Nevertheless, I think we were able to wedge in five off-days during the course of a 40-day shoot. The remaining 20 shooting days were covered in Korea. CFGC is handling distribution in China, and Korea’s Little Big Pictures is handling the film’s theatrical release in Korea scheduled one month after the Chinese release.

 

 

 

The agreement itself is just a symbolic. In reality, nothing much has really changed. The most important thing though is that it raised awareness among Korean filmmakers that the foreign film restriction investment rate for china has been lowered to 20%. But even without this agreement, co-productions between both countries are bound to increase because our film industry workforce is more cost-effective and outstanding in quality than the Hollywood workforce that receives a rather hyped-up premium due to its name value.

 

I think the Confucianism shared throughout Asia plays a significant role. China may have gone through the Cultural Revolution and Socialism, but there still exists a deep identification with Confucianism which is a totally different sensibility from that of the West. Another point is that local contents> creators such as film directors, writers, and skilled film crew are unable to keep up with the speed of the consistently growing local film industry propelled by theaters. This is why Chinese investors or film companies are turning to Korea.

 

 

Chinese companies such as China’s Huace Film & TV who bought stakes in NEW, are quite interested in the dynamism Korean films and filmmakers have been putting out. If crew members with special effects and Digital Intermediate expertise were hired in the past as in the case of Aftershock and Assembly, now film directors and actors are being hired while Chinese companies are looking into Korean contents such as TV dramas and webcomics for viable film items. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be much distinct star power for Korean acting talents in the Chinese market apart from Gianna JUN, KIM Soo-hyun and LEE Min-ho. As for film directors, the most popular Korean films among the Chinese audience were My Sassy Girl and The Classic. The director of both films KWAK Jae-yong was called at one point, the “God of Film” in China.