The Juche Idea
2008 | 01:02:00 | United States | English | B&W and Color | Stereo | 16:9 | HD video
Collection: Single Titles
Tags: Film or Videomaking, Labor, Politics


In the late 1960s Kim Jong Il guaranteed his succession as the Dear Leader of North Korea by adapting his father's Juche (pronounced choo-CHAY) philosophy to propaganda, film and art. Translated as self-reliance, Juche is a hybrid of Confucian and authoritarian Stalinist Pseudo-socialism. The film is about a South Korean video artist who comes to a North Korean art residency to help bring Juche cinema into the 21st Century. Inspired by the real-life story of the South Korean director kidnapped in the '70s to invigorate the North Korean film industry, the film follows Yoon Jung Lee, a young video artist invited to work at a Juche art residency on a North Korean collective farm. The story is told through the films she made at the residency as well as interviews with a Bulgarian filmmaker and even a brief sci-fi movie.
Premiere
2008Exhibitions + Festivals
dOCUMENTA (13), June 25 2012
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Concrete Cinema / Jim Finn Presents The Juche Idea and Selected Shorts, June 14 2012
Anthology Film Archives, Utopian Comedies: The Films of Jim Finn, May 27-June 2 2010