VICE Japan

• 海外

彼の国の金正日は核兵器だけでなく、相当な映画オタクでもあったようだ。２万本以上の映画コレクション、７つの個人用映画館、さらには首都平壌の中心に撮影スタジオまで持ち合わせている。

１年半に及ぶ交渉を経てようやく北朝鮮入国を果たしたVICEのシェーンだが、なかなかスタジオに足を運ぶことができない。秘密警察や警護の人間に行動を制限された挙げ句、決まり切った観光スポットや巨大マスゲーム「アリラン」を巡るツアーが続く。

そのなかにおいても、貧困や電力不足をよそに、権力を握るたった少数の人間だけのために国民全体が奉仕するこの国の体制に気づいていく。

We went to North Korea to try and penetrate the Korean Feature Film Studio, the state-run film production facility west of Pyongyang: a sprawling lot that at its height produced around 40 films a year.

You could say that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has two primary obsessions: maintaining nuclear weapons capability as a means of protecting his "hermit kingdom," and thwarting pressure from outside forces like America and the rest of the industrialized world to open his country to modern things like electricity... and he's obsessed with film. He loves movies. It's rumored that he has one of the largest private film collections in the world. His favorite film is Gone with the Wind and his favorite actress is Elizabeth Taylor. He's a film collector and bona fide cinephile, but he's much more. He's everything really. He's a director, a producer, a financier, a costume maker, set designer, screenwriter, cameraman, sound engineer... and he's also a film theorist. His masterwork on aesthetics and practice is "On the Art of Cinema" (written and published in the early 1970s). In it he gives himself the humble title, "Genius of the Cinema." He built an extensive film studio in Pyongyang and when he couldn't find someone to make his film he did what any self-respecting eternal leader and great president would do... he kidnapped one.

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