Propaganda Film Project Backfires on North Korea
Description
A documentary intended as a portrayal of a happy family in North Korea has instead become a behind-the-scenes look at how the country's authorities manipulate appearances.
The film "Under the Sun," which airs at a film festival in Washington on Thursday, assembles smuggled outtakes to show the inner workings of how a propaganda film is made in North Korea, a country known for fiercely controlling its image.
With a script agreed upon by North Korean officials and Russian documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky, the project began as a portrait of a supposedly ordinary 8-year-old girl in Pyongyang named Ri Zin Mi, as she prepares to join the upcoming pageantry for the birthday of Kim Jong Il, the late North Korean leader. They also worked out access to the girl, her family, her home, her school, and even the workplaces of her parents.It is unclear whether the film crew and the North Koreans ever had the same vision for how the film should turn out. But soon after filming began, the filmmakers began to chafe at the expectations of the North Korean authorities.
"It was completely fake," said producer Simone Baumann. "They would come to the scene, and would tell the people what they have to do, where they have to sit, how they have to sit, how they have to smile, they would tell them what they have to say."
'Say that joyfully'In scene after scene, the movie reveals the outtakes of North Korean handlers staging each scene for the cameras, instructing everyone on what to do, feeding them lines, and directing them to show more enthusiasm.
In one setup, an official tells factory workers to be more effusive about their work. "One more time. Why is your applause so weak?" he says. At a second factory, the handler feeds the workers lines about productivity and workplace satisfaction. "Say that joyfully," he adds.
Even a highly decorated war veteran is not immune: a minder interrupts him and tells him to finish up his war stories, and segue to his scripted lines.
And for a scene where the young Zin Mi is tucked into bed, two handlers are seen arranging the shot, right down to the blankets.
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As disputes worsened over the direction of the project, North Korean authorities announced they were pulling the plug. But the filmmakers still had the footage, including the outtakes, thanks to a camera that was always rolling, and a recording system that used two memory cards instead of one.
Baumann said North Korean censors would review the footage every night and delete clips they did not approve of. But the camera crew, risking unknown consequences if they were caught, kept a duplicate memory card of each shoot.
"The camerawoman is very brave. She put [the memory card] in her trousers when she went to the toilet," said Baumann. "They gave one of them to the North Koreans, and the second one they took with them."
Using the smuggled footage, the filmmakers decided to continue the project, unauthorized, as a behind-the-scenes exposé. "We decided we had to show that everything is staged," said Baumann.