Policy for Int¡¯l film festival needed

Korea hosts three international film festivals - Pusan International Film Festival, Puchon Fantastic International Film Festival and Chonju International Film Festival. There are, of course, some views that the three are too many for this small land.

Such a view is a misunderstanding caused by not sufficiently looking into the cultural, education and industrial significance of a film festival.

Honest are the spectators. Our society¡¯s belated bur ever growing special concern about movies is proved by young people flocking to every festival.

The inaugural Chonju International Film Festival advocated the festival of ¡°alternative movies.¡± The organizers were much concerned about whether the general public could easily understand the concept of alternative movies.

Namely, their goal was itself a risk. The goal was to show the spectators the latest made movies searching for the wider possibility of the art of film experimentally, instead of the mainstreaming commercial films distributed through movie houses and video tapes.

But Chonju movie houses were crowded with young people from across the nation throughout the festival period. Even they swarmed to the theaters showing movies which were supposed to be very boring for the public. In that the festival attracted many viewers, it was successful after those of Pusan and Puchon and its future is also bright.

These festivals cost 2 billion won annually. It must be a big money, but not so at all, taking into consideration the significance of the events. The effect of film festival is very great, compared with its comparatively low cost among other international cultural and artistic events. This is of course due to the public characteristics of the movie as a medium.

How fortunate it is for the sake of numerous people from across the nation yearning for new movies as well as the host city citizens that 100-200 movies from across the world are showed in a city throughout a week.

Thinking that one international festival is enough for Korea is a simple thought like thinking that one capital city is enough for a country as a big city. It is impossible to bring together the diverse trends of the global film markets in only one international festival.

About 500 films, including short and long ones, are shown at the three festivals. But a few of them are viewed at movie houses and distributed through videotapes. These festivals offer privileged chances to see very meaningful and important movies of countries which are excluded in the distribution process in the international film market dominated by the U.S. movies.There may be some people who say that such movies are available on Internet, but movie viewing through Internet is still an peripheral phenomenon. Not so many movies are shown on Internet, yet.

For the promotion of film industry, various supporting measures are sought at a government level, but basically no measures will be effective without securing more movie spectators, because the countries with small number of moviegoers inevitably lack competitiveness.

International film festival does not exist only for the movie crazies. It should be evaluated as a state¡¯s strategic industry to find and secure new spectators. The latest bright signs for the Korean movie industry are originated by the formation of new movie spectators led by collegians.

But it is still a problem that the new spectators are limited to collegians and young women. Potential spectators should be found continuously from among diverse age groups in order to help bloom the tastes of a society toward movies from the viewpoint of both viewing and producing.

It is essential not only from the educational viewpoint designed to foster moviemakers and spectators of the future but from the industrial one to select new movies of each country, to show them, to invite the directors and producers of the movies and to provide an opportunity to have dialogue with them.

Personally, I think that we can host one or two more international film festivals. It is desirable for the festivals to compete with each other by sharing roles with their different features. This is because it is spectators who determine the propriety of an international film festival.