“We are confident that new possibilities for Korean films will be shown”
This year’s
Jeonju Project Market (JPM), which is held annually in spring at the same time as the
Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF), introduces the Jeonju Cinema Fund for the first time. The JPM already has a long list of productions that have been recognized abroad, such as
YI Seung-jun’s
Planet of Snail (2012, screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam),
HWANG Yun’s
An Omnivorous Family’s Dilemma (2015, screened at the Berlin International Film Festival),
Kelvin Kyung Kun PARK’s
A Dream of Iron (2014, NETPAC Prize-winner at the Berlin International Film Festival), and
JEON Kyu-hwan’s
Dance Town (2011, screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and at the Berlin International Film Festival) as well as Korean theatrical releases like
Unwanted Brother (2015) and
With or Without You (2016). With this new program, the JPM intends to have a greater involvement in the support of creative works. AHN is in charge of the Jeonju Cinema Fund and shared a few words with us on this big project.
First, could you please introduce the Jeonju Cinema Fund?
The Jeonju Cinema Fund was created to support creative and unique feature film and documentary projects during their development stage. Out of a total fund of KRW 100 million (USD 88,000), each project selected will receive a grant of KRW 10 million. The purpose of this fund is to help projects get a solid foundation while they are still in development. There are two things to take away from our new initiative. The first one is that this fund has been created as a joint effort with entities in the film industry. Although we have managed to run this program through self-funding up till now, we now hope that the Jeonju Cinema Fund will an added incentive for companies to produce and finance the projects selected for funding. We have thus reinforced Jeonju Cinema Fund’s ties with the Jeonju Cinema Project (JCP) to raise our capacity to produce films. A ‘JCP Selection Committee’ will choose among a selection of projects one (or more) of them to receive financing for its production. Likewise, this fund aspires to open up prospects for Korean films by expanding the scope and the scale of our support, so that creative talents have better chances to see their projects come to fruition.
How did the Jeonju Cinema Fund come to be? It sounds as if this idea came up naturally while running the JPM….
Until last year, the JPM was helming funding programs such as the ‘Feature Film Pitching’ and the ‘Documentary Pitching’. Many projects benefited from this support, as it helped them get to the next stage of production, yet that was not without problems. As the grants were funded by the festival itself, it meant that the amount could fluctuate from one year to the next depending on the sponsorship the festival was receiving. Because of this instability, there have been extremely unfortunate cases where producers and filmmakers who had worked hard for their pitches would leave the festival empty-handed. That’s why in the second half of 2016 we went back to the drawing board in an attempt to focus on securing a stable support and raising our capacity for supporting production, and so we created this fund. The main principle behind this is to create a joint fund in collaboration with key entities in the local film production and investment industry in exchange for a ‘first-look option’. From the point-of-view of production and investment companies, the fund allows them to acquire in advance promising projects while they are still in development, while from the creators’ perspective it obviously raises their chances to see their films financed and made. With these criteria in mind, we entered into negotiations with several companies before fixing our choice on 51k and actor
SO Ji-sub.
How did actor SO Ji-sub and his management company 51K get to participate in the fund?
51k and SO Ji-sub have been constantly producing outstanding works by investing in non-commercial films such as High-Rise and Café Society. The reason for their participation in this fund is due to their emphasis on creating good quality cultural content. Especially, they fully relate to the fund’s goal to offer creative talents the opportunity to express their artistic vision to the fullest. Moreover, through their involvement in the Jeonju Cinema Fund, we believe that 51k will have the opportunity to go beyond its reputation as a talent management company to establish itself as an up-and-coming film production company.
With the JIFF, the JPM and now the Jeonju Cinema Fund, it seems like there is a strong desire to discover talented Korean filmmakers.
Last year,
KIM Yang-hee’s
The Poet and The Boy, which had first been introduced at the JPM ‘Feature Film Pitching’, received production financing from the JCP and had its world premiere at this year’s JIFF. We believe this case should not remain unique and so we will choose one or two, among the projects already selected for the Jeonju Cinema Fund, for the JCP, which will provide them the funding for their production. This way, we can play a leading role in the making of outstanding films.
Are there other organizations in the festival beside the JCP that support creative talents?
We are operating a projects research center, ‘MiddleEarth Lab’, that aims to support and promote non-commercial projects in Korean films. There are two aspects to MiddleEarth Lab. The first one is its focus on developing medium-scale projects (with a production budget of less than USD 3.5 million), which constitute the backbone of the Korean film industry. This is in line with our commitment to show new potentials in our film industry that is extremely polarized in terms of production costs. With the participation of filmmakers, writers, acting talents and critics, the lab also develops projects that allow their own respective talents and characters to shine thanks to unlimited creative activity. Filmmaker
SHIN Yeon-shick is the key researcher in charge of the center, and
Alive (2015) director
PARK Jung-bum,
The World of Us (2016) director
YOON Ga-eun, actor
Don LEE, and film critic
LEE Sang-yong are involved in this program. The results will be showcased during the JPM. We are confident that new possibilities for Korean films will be shown thanks to MiddleEarth Lab.