Home

The Great North Korean Picture Show (2013) [N/A]

Release Date:
May 4, 2013

Original Title:
The Great North Korean Picture Show

Ratings / Certifications:
 N/A

Runtime: 94

Overview from TheMovieDB

Welcome to Hollywood, Kim Jong-il style. For the first time, foreign cameras are allowed into the world’s most secretive state’s only film school. In a country where film is a vital propaganda tool, not entertainment, what room is there for artistic expression? Very little. Filmmakers James Leong and Lynn Lee follow two young actors and a director, handpicked by the regime to become stars, as they hone their craft. Every scene of implored love for the state, each painstaking rehearsal, even a surprise lesson in how to frame a portrait of Kim Jong-un raises the question of whether a gun, either literal or metaphorical, is pointed at the actors from the ever-watchful sidelines. We are never certain whether its rank and file toe the party line with anything like the willingness evinced by the privileged protagonists. Searing critique, objective observation or just fantastic fun, this is an irresistible glimpse behind barbed wire.

Click the heading above to show or hide the text.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Production

Director:
James Leong
Lynn Lee

Click the heading above to show or hide the list.

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.