Pyongyang Film Festival

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The Pyongyang International Film Festival is a biennial cultural exhibition held in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The film festival is an unusually cosmopolitan event for a state known to be reclusive to Western contact.

The event originated in 1987 as the Pyongyang Film Festival of the Non-aligned and Other Developing Countries. As the name precisely delineated, the festival was a cultural exchange between countries of the non-aligned movement. The maiden event, held from September 1 through September 10, showed short films, features, and documentaries that were judged for competitive awards.

The film festival returned in 1990 and would be regularly held every other year. Recurrent subject matter included domestic cinema that commonly praised the high leadership such as a film shown at the 1992 film festival, verbosely translated, Glory of Our People in Holding the Great Leader in High Esteem, and foreign films about revolutionary resistance. In 2000, officials widened the acceptable breadth of film watching, by screening Japanese films for the first time. Six films by director Yoji Yamada, including two installments of Otoko wa tsurai yo, a long running franchise, were shown at the festival and in theaters.

The 9th festival, held in 2004, moderated cultural restrictions further with the screening of a dubbed and censored version of the British comedy Bend It Like Beckham and U.S.-produced South African drama Cry, The Beloved Country. Bend it like Beckham reportedly delighted the limited audience of less than 100 who were allowed to see it. The film won the music prize.

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