Monday, October 2, 2008 - The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter | Thursday, October 2, 2008 special world report | kim dong-ho salute
Promotion Corp. (the forerunner of the
Korea Film Council), the Korea Performance
Ethics Board and the Seoul Arts Center. In
short, he was the ultimate cultural insider.
Right away, Kim got to work in his new
role. The then-vice mayor of Busan was an
old friend, so Kim arranged a meeting.
That led to a meeting with the mayor himself
and soon they had their first significant
pledge of funding — more than
$400,000. Fundraising dinners and special
events were arranged, and within a few
months they had raised nearly all the
money they needed for that first festival.
On Sept. 13, 1996, the Pusan International
Film Festival made its debut. It was
chaotic but undeniably successful, with
184,000 people attending over the event’s
nine-day run.
“My great pleasure and honor was that
first PIFF,” Kim says. “I will never forget it.”
“There could have been no better front
man for PIFF than Kim Dong-ho,” film
critic and longtime PIFF adviser Tony
Rayns says. “(Kim was) extremely well
connected throughout the government and
with the heads of various jaebeol (conglomerates).
His involvement cut through
much red tape and drew sponsorship from
all and sundry. Thanks to him, the festival
got off to the best possible start.”
Another vital impact Kim had was helping
the festival overcome the Korean government’s
infamous penchant for censorship.
One of the major goals of PIFF was to
present films and ideas that normally could
not make it into Korea. Despite opening
greatly since the end of military rule, Korea
remained a conservative, Confucian culture
with a heavy-handed bureaucracy. What
good would PIFF be if government scissors
could chop up offending ideas before anyone
saw them?
Having led the Korea Performance Ethics
Board for a time (before being removed for
being too lenient), Kim knew just how the
organization worked. So he came up with a
novel two-pronged strategy: drink and
delay. Kim met often with review board
members and, while consuming more than
a few alcoholic beverages, asked for some
leniency and understanding. While Kim
played nice by night, the rest of the PIFF
staff did their best to gum up the works,
holding off answering the committee’s
questions for as long as possible and backlogging
the whole process.
“My great pleasure and
honor was that first PIFF.
I will never forget it.” CHUNG
It might seem like a pretty passiveaggressive
resistance strategy, but it
worked. The committee’s reviewers agreed
to travel to Busan to prescreen the movies
(usually these screenings were only done in
Seoul). And by the time they got to the festival’s
headquarters, there was too little
time to review all the movies.
PIFF GM Oh Seok-geun, meanwhile, did
his best to distract the reviewers whenever
sex and nudity turned up on the videos and
kept the most controversial films out of
sight as much as possible. The distributor of
David Cronenberg’s “Crash” ended up submitting
an expurgated version to the festival,
but most of the films made it to that
first PIFF without censorship, and many
avoided being prescreened altogether.
Since then, PIFF has grown into one of
the most important events on the Asian
movie industry calendar. In addition to
promoting films from all over the region,
PIFF today also features an array of profes-
sional and educational events — including
the Asian Film Market, Pusan Promotion
Plan, and the Asian Film Academy — all
designed to improve the Korean and Asian
movie industries. And this year it will
break ground on the Busan Film Center,
the future home of PIFF.
“The thing about Kim that I love and
respect so much is that he’s the picture of
integrity,” said Richard Pena, program
director at the New York Film Festival and
Film Society of Lincoln Center. “The reason
that PIFF gained so much respect so
quickly is that it set a high standard for
itself and it kept to it. I don’t think it was
just a mouthpiece for Korean cinema, it
was a mouthpiece for very good Korean
Festival director
Kim Dong-ho
at a PIFF news
conference
cinema, and that’s why people began to
trust it — for that and other films.”
In recognition of all that Kim has
accomplished, The Hollywood Reporter is
presenting Kim with a Nielsen Impact
Award at this year’s PIFF.
In addition to Kim’s skills within Korea’s
corridors of power, he proved equally
adept at working with filmmakers, executives
and bureaucrats from around the
world. He travels constantly, frequently
serving on film juries and attending more
than a dozen film festivals each year. And
his drinking prowess is legendary, with
Kim going late into the night, night after
night, only to arise early the next day for
breakfast and exercise (only in the last
couple of years has Kim been forced to cut
back, due to doctor’s orders).
“I am very proud of my career at the
Ministry of Culture,” Kim said, adding with
a laugh, “But I prefer now, working with the
film side at PIFF. It’s my second life.” ∂
Los Angeles 323.525.2000 | New York 646.654.5000 | London +44.207.420.6139 | Beijing +86.10.6512.5511 (ext. 121) | THR.com/pusan | day 1
8
SUNG-JUN/GETTY IMAGES