‘Renew: the renewal of old customs, practices, organizations, and methods by completely changing them.’ The three people who have been designated as flag bearers of change ahead of the 30th anniversary.
‘The value and reputation of the Busan International Film Festival has been countlessly acknowledged and praised without any need to add anything more.’ That’s the first sentence written by the Innovation Committee that was formed in January to restructure the Busan International Film Festival for five months, disbanding after completing its role. This sentence confirms that the founding motivation behind this innovation was an internal aspiration rooted in a profound and unwavering affection for the Busan International Film Festival. It is pride and love that drive us to reflect painfully on the past and move forward into tomorrow.
The Innovation Committee of the Busan International Film Festival was formed in July last year at the peak of the festival’s internal conflicts. As the committee’s title suggests, it was to carry out personnel for ‘innovation’. All members agreed to nominate director Park Kwang-su as the sole candidate for the new chairman, and he was appointed unanimously. The committee stated that Park Kwang-su has the qualifications to ‘provide a vision and direction for the future of the Busan International Film Festival, a willingness to innovate, knowledge of international film festivals and domestic and international networks, strong trust from filmmakers, and affection for Busan.
The Chairperson Park Kwang-su is referred to as the ‘director of directors’ for leading the New Wave of Korean films from the late 1980s to the 1990s, directing films such as “Chil-su And Man-su”, “Black Republic”, “To The Starry Island”, and “A Single Spark”, with directors such as Lee Chang-dong, Heo Jin-ho, Kim Sung-soo, and Oh Seung-wook coming under his direction. His study abroad trips to Paris in the 1980s were rare in those days, and his knowledge of major film festivals at a time when Korean films were rarely invited to overseas festivals, made it possible for him to establish the practical foundation of the Busan International Film Festival. He is also regarded as a pioneer in the industrialization of Asian cinema, having founded the Busan Promotion Plan (now Asia Project Market) and the Asian Film Market (now Asian Contents & Film Market). After a few declines, he has returned to Busan. When I asked him how the past five months have been for him, I expected an affectionate answer about how it feels to be back, but on most matters, he was looking at the Busan International Film Festival with a rigorous and strict eye, and it felt like that exacting objectivity was indeed another way of loving. Meanwhile, pieces of the innovations he would bring to the festival during his presidency shined through.
Park Kwang-su, Chairperson
You turned down an offer to become the chairperson of the Busan International Film Festival before accepting. What was it like to finally accept?
I had offers from other festivals as well as the Busan International Film Festival, but I turned them all down. At that time, I was contracted with a film company and was making my own films. One day, a few members of the Innovation Committee visited me, accompanied by Sung Ji-hye from my film direction department. We met when she called me, and I think she decided to come forward because of my unflattering reaction for chairman position. Many people were talking about how many people were fighting so hard to get the festival back on track, even people who had nothing to do with the festival, and they said, ‘Isn’t it troubling that your reaction is like this? When I heard about the internal situation at that time, which I didn’t know much about, I was a little shocked. I felt troubled as someone who founded the Busan International Film Festival and worked there for a long time. They say there is no alternative (to the chairman position), and I also don’t think there is much alternative (laughs).
We’d love to hear how you’ve spent the last five months.
The Busan International Film Festival has been getting a lot of hate, and when I looked up articles in the media, there were quite a few criticisms. I need to know exactly what’s wrong and why, so I can figure out how to move forward. I spent five months looking closely at the festival, trying to get an objective reality of the people running the festival, what they were thinking and what they were doing. When I took over in February, the main contents and direction of the festival, such as the program, had been set. So, this year, I decided to take a wait and see approach, because even if it’s not what I think it should be, there might be something in there that works.
The most things that you think need to change?
Film festivals and films move on the same track, Korean films have changed a lot, there’s a lot of competition, but festivals haven’t. I think it’s been stagnant for the last 10 years or more. About thirty years ago, there were five people who started the Busan International Film Festival, and I’m the only one out of those five who quit and left. It’s like we missed a generation change, so I think there needs to be a more significant change even now, especially in terms of the personnel structure. More than anything, film festivals need to have a virtuous cycle of new people coming in and out, trained with new sensibilities.
As one of the founding members of the Busan International Film Festival, you established the actual foundation of the festival – do you remember how it all started?
At that time, I was one of the few directors in Korea who went to many overseas film festivals, and as I went to many festivals, foreign critics were writing and evaluating my films, and at some point, I felt dissatisfied, ‘Do they even know about Korea?’ It’s a film made by a Korean director and taken in Korea, so they should understand the context of Korea’s history and social situation. While watching them highlighting foreign films and bringing them back to Korea, I thought that there should be a film festival in Korea, where we can evaluate our own films and evaluate other people’s films, and then I was approached to create a film festival.
That’s how his relationship with Busan began, serving as vice chairman of the first Busan International Film Festival in 1996.
At that time, there was not much civic consciousness about theater culture, and the doors were constantly open during film screenings. There were no proper theaters, so it seemed that the capacity to hold a big international film festival was still insufficient, considering various conditions. Therefore, we decided to focus on Asian film festivals. In those days, there were few film festivals in Asia that operated with a clear direction. Most of the Asian countries were authoritarian and corrupt, and there were many countries with immature democracies, and above all, there was censorship. If there is censorship, a proper film festival cannot be created. At that time, Kim Dong-ho was the chairman of the Busan International Film Festival’s Performance Ethics Committee, and he reached a consensus to get rid of the censorship of the Busan International Film Festival’s entries. On this basis, the festival has been directed to become an Asian-centric, non-competitive film festival with a financial market that supports talents in difficult situations.
How close is the current festival to your vision of what you wanted it to be?
Well, I would say that we’re at a point where we absolutely need to change, and I think we’re on a deadline.
It’s a disappointment, but meanwhile, the Busan International Film Festival has grown to become Asia’s largest film festival.
Outwardly, I think we have followed diligently. There are not many film festivals that have such a big space like the Hall of Films, and some people even say that Busan International Film Festival is the second after Cannes in terms of outward appearance, but there are many things that need to be improved on the inside. A film festival needs to have the film market in the background to make the interior stronger. The current Busan International Film Festival is based on the idea of being an Asian film festival, and it is screening a lot of Asian films, but it doesn’t lead to distribution. this makes the vision of the festival dark. The films that are exhibited should be connected to the market so that they can reach a wider audience in the future.
Early on, you have recognized the importance of markets. You founded the Busan Promotion Plan and the Asian Film Market, the root of the Asia Project Market and the Asian Contents & Film Market, and served as the chairman of the Asia Film Market Operation Director from its establishment until 2007. How did you get started?
At the moment, the Hong Kong International Film Festival Market was held in a very big size, and when I went there, I realised that festival power is market power. Market power is how much a film can be sold and distributed at that festival, and Cannes is the biggest market in Europe, so everyone is aiming for Cannes first. I recommended to then Chairman Kim Dong-ho, ‘You need to pay attention to what Hong Kong is doing. You should run the market,’ and he said, “If Park Kwang-su runs the market, I’ll do it,” and I said, “If not, I won’t do it,” and he said, “Then I’ll just start it,” and we started it. We found a serious problem. There was no advantage for us to have a successful sales market. The Busan International Film Festival is held in October, and the American Film Market (AFM) is only a month and a half after that, so there’s no reason for sales companies to come to Busan right before. We decided that a simple sales market wasn’t going to work, so we decided to create a production market to enable collaborations and productions. The whole Asian film talent pool is open, and the directors, actors, producers, and investment companies are all open and sharing who they are so that productions can happen right away. We approached all the Chinese and Japanese management companies and convinced them to invite actors to come, and there were quite a few actors. Attracting directors and actors was a good response.
Maybe the biggest change for the Busan International Film Festival in your first year as chairman will start with the market. How do you plan to develop the big picture of the Asian Contents & Film Market?
I came here and found that the relationship between the festival and the market, as well as the market’s own operational direction and vision, were not clear. The Asian Contents & Film Market Chairman Kim Young-duk, who joined the committee in March, is doing a good job. It needs to be structured to support the actual industry people in the festival and the market in terms of direction, budget to have the independence, human connections, administrative systems, and so on. I think that will be arranged with time.
How do you think the role of film festivals should be in the changing film industry and its environment?
What do you think film festivals in today’s world should be about? Film festivals are essentially a place where you come to see the new films coming out. They’re the first place where the world’s most remarkable films are presented, and the evaluation area is very important because they’re the first to be presented. Discovering new generations, new film languages, and awarding them, scoring them, and spotlighting them is what film festivals do. In addition, film festivals are fundamentally representing the country where they are held and its national culture. In that sense, I think there should be a more original Korean film festival at the moment. Instead of just following European film festivals such as Cannes or Berlin, or paying attention to them simply for having won awards there, we should aim for creative film festivals that have their own way of evaluating from the Korean perspective. And this creativity should be supported by financial independence. The Busan International Film Festival’s budget is 60% of the total budget from the city of Busan and the government, while other film festivals have less. It is a film festival with a relatively large amount of revenue generated by itself. I believe this structure is also connected to the festival’s future direction.
It’s the 30th anniversary of the Busan International Film Festival next year – how will you be preparing for this special time?
I’m curious about how the number ‘30’ approaches. It’s a long time, isn’t it? I think the Korean film industry has grown along with the festival in a similar time frame. Seoul National University of Arts is celebrating its 30th anniversary next year, as well as several other major film production companies, distributors, and others. I was here when I was supposed to be working, so….( everyone laughs). I’m going to keep an eye on it this year and see where it goes for the 30th anniversary. We’ve got to apply for next year’s budget by last August, so I’ve got a direction for what we’re going to do for the 30th anniversary not too long ago, but I can’t give you anything away (laughs).
I would like to end this interview with a personal question. When you were a young man, you founded the Seoul Film Group, and was the first to use the term ‘Film Movement.’ You have worked hard to ensure that Korean films have the right values as a culture, and shown this through your work, and until recently, you have lived in film by training new generations of filmmakers. How do you remember this journey?
When I made the Seoul Film Group, nobody wanted to be in the film industry. It was perceived as if people in the film industry were in the devil’s lair. They thought of them as dirty, unworthy people. There were two people I saw who weren’t like that, and they were the director, Im Kwon-taek and Lee Jang-ho. It was a rough time, except for those two people, because they were seen as terrible human beings (laughs). It was a time when if I said I was going to make a film, people were like, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ It happened to me. I became a filmmaker and I met an art school classmate and he was like, ‘Dude, of all the things you could do, why are you do that?’ It must have been a very terrible neighborhood.
It’s a very different place to where you are now, and you’ve spent your whole life changing perceptions. What is it about film that keeps you in it?
Film is… just film. If I didn’t do films, I would have just painted, because I fell out of love with painting and turned to film. I haven’t painted since then. Initially, I went to film clubs because I thought it would help my painting, but… Film is just something I do. I still work on screenplays on the weekends, and I still do things for film. It’s not over, I’m still continuing, but I got caught here…. (laughs).
