Busan: Making Asian Film Market Ready For the Next 20 Years1 min read

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The Busan Film Festival was born of a burst of creative effervescence in 1996 when the Korean film industry was a tiny bubble that had yet to explode onto the international scene. Its founders, many of whom are still attached, defied the country’s censorship authorities and dared to show Japanese films that at the time were banned and Asian films that were unseen in Korea.

The Busan festival can take a large degree of credit for sparking a virtuous cycle of filmmaking creativity, multiplex building and industrial activity in Korea. Asian cinema may have emerged anyway, but without Busan it would certainly have done so more slowly.

Today Busan ““ the festival, the city and its proactive film commission ““ would like to be seen as the hub of Asian cinema. They are not quite there and the festival has lost some of its fizz.

Read the full article here>> via Variety