13th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 27 - Jul 14, 2014

FilmsGuestsSchedule & Tickets

Photo:

U.S. Premiere

Aim High in Creation!

Aim High in Creation! is a revolutionary comedy about the cinematic genius of North Korea's late Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, with a groundbreaking experiment at its heart: a propaganda film, made according to the rules of his 1987 Manifesto "The Cinema and Directing.” Determined to stop a new gas mine near her Sydney home, director Anna Broinowski (Forbidden Lie$) goes to North Korea to learn from the masters of propaganda cinema. In a worldwide first, Pyongyang's top directors, composers, and movie stars take her to script rehearsals, Taekwondo stunt fights, group dances, drunken picnics, and a film shoot on a real-life captured U.S. spy ship to teach her Kim Jong-il's techniques. Back in Sydney, Anna's fearless cast follow the North Koreans' instructions to produce a didactic socialist melodrama, full of song and kick-ass fights, in which "heroic workers” rise up to defeat the "evil, gas-fracking miners.” Through the shared love of cinema, Aim High in Creation! forges an astonishing new bond—between North Korea's hidden filmmakers and their collaborators in the Free World. Revealing an unexpected truth about the most isolated nation on earth: filmmakers, no matter where they live—are family.

Director: Anna Broinowski
Languages: English and Korean with English subtitles
2013; 97 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Thursday July 10, 8:15pm
Film Society of Lincoln Center

Q&A with Anna Broinowski.

Anna Broinowski

Anna Broinowski is a multiple AFI award-winning director, writer and producer who has been making films since 1995.

Her documentaries include Forbidden Lie$, Helen's War, Sexing the Label and Hell Bento!!. Awards include 3 AFIs, the Rome Film Festival Cult Prize, a Walkley Award for Journalism, the Russian Film Critics' prize, the Al Jazeera Film Festival Golden Award, two Australian Film Critics' awards, the 2008 NSW Premier's Literary Award and Best Director at Films Des Femmes in France.

Forbidden Lie$ is one of the top ten highest grossing Australian documentaries of all time. It screened across the US, the Middle East and Europe, winning the inaugural Writer's Guild of America (East and West) Best Non-fiction Screenplay Award. Prior to filmmaking, Anna was a writer and actor, graduating from Sydney University in 1988 and NIDA in 1990. She won an Arts NSW Writer's Fellowship for her play The Gap (Currency Press), worked as a Film Project Manager at the Australian Film Commission, and has served on many international and Australian film festival juries. Anna has lectured on film at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, R.M.I.T. and Macquarie University, where she is completing a phD.