Festival director Shin Chul is in his fifth year at Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan), running June 29 to July 9.
Asia’s largest genre film festival is in its 27th year in a South Korean city that is celebrating its 50th anniversary and both are commemorating the occasion together amidst tides of change that Shin discusses here.
What are some of the main focuses at Bifan this year?
We are making efforts to expand Made in Asia, the initiative where we look at the box office results and industries in Asia. We invite producers and directors to talk about the state of their respective film industries and publish [a booklet] about it. We are strengthening and expanding Made in Asia and inviting more guests to it this year.
Bucheon seems to have gained great recognition in Asia on the genre side and it also seems to be helping the industry. Films like Tiger Stripes from Malaysia that were completed after participating in our project market have seen success, so we seem to be producing good results. We seem to be seen as an important Asian film festival so we are making endeavours to play the role of a hub in that area.
Programme director Ellen Kim is leading an initiative where we are trying to make a cooperative organisation centred on genre films with Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and others. It’s still in early stages and we are doing the foundational work this year, talking closely with the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) about the question of the identity of films, the rapid changes in the profit structure based on theatrical returns and measures to take in the relationship with streaming services.
Can you speak more to the changes you have seen?
The Republic of Korea’s changes are especially fast with streaming services and [technology]. It’s like what the Korean music industry experienced 20 years ago, where music lost more than 80% of sales in a short period of time. Signs like that are arising at theatres, and content convergence and various things are proliferating, on top of which generative AI has popped up.
Regionally speaking, Bucheon has brought a lot of fantastic film market focus to Asia. So it looks like we will be hosting more than 200 guests from Asia this year. Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival has been going on for 27 years and the city of Bucheon is having its 50th anniversary this year. It has an interesting history of going from being an industrial zone to declaring itself and evolving into a city of culture and we are celebrating that.
How is the festival working with the city this year?
For film festivals, community is tremendously important. Bucheon citizens’ eyes have evolved in terms of watching films as they have been participating and enjoying the film festival for 27 years. And these citizens’ desires have increased. They have been watching films a bit all along during this time, but they also want to participate more actively in the festival. That’s why since last year, we have created a carnival.
Last year, it was a small experiment that we called Halloween in July. This year, we are expanding it. We can’t use the word Halloween anymore after the very dangerous accident that happened [in Itaewon where hundreds of people were involved in a crowd crush in a small alleyway that resulted in more than 150 dead] so we changed the name to Carnival in July [which involves parades, dance parties, water gun fights and different experiences in venues across the city.]
You often talk about expanding the definition of cinema to include series for the survival of cinema, saying things like: “Why do we call Harry Potter cinema but not Squid Game?”
The position of films – the traditional definition of films – is shaking severely. There are so many things to watch outside of theatres and an industrial reorganisation is taking place. I’ve been talking about this for three to four years and the situation is only expanding and has gotten worse. The industry, academia and the government have yet to come up with ideas or methods. Film festivals don’t have the solutions. We can only ask questions. We can propose the questions of how and what to do and we will continue to propose these questions and put forth samples [for discussion].
No comments yet