With the advent of sound and the emergence of classical Hollywood style which set a certain standard and ideal for cinemas around the world, including those of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, a classic movie experience became identified with the spectator’s complete immersion into the diegetic world of the film, or its fictional narrative space. The new widescreen technology was meant to further enhance the illusion of an alternate cinematic reality unfolding on the now extended screen, with audiences being fully consumed by the newest modern spectacle. The classic movie experience, characterized by its technically seamless quality and a complete absorption of the viewer, came to be seen as incompatible with anything that would contravene this
principle. An ideal for which the North Korean film industry also strived proved much harder to attain in real life than one would have hoped.
Owing to numerous technological and economic constraints, North Korean picture-houses of the 1950s were a far cry from ideal viewing conditions. Technical issues with film projection seem to have been an endemic problem even in larger cities, frequently turning a film-viewing experience into an adventure in its own right. Whether the problem was an old projector or a poorly trained projectionist or a combination of both, film presentations seem to have rarely run without a glitch. In fact, it appears as if glitches were an essential part of the cinema experience in this period.
While the average number of people who went to the movies had increased by more than six times compared to the prewar levels from 60,000 to 380,000 people a day, the country’s three film studios could not keep up with that rate of growth in terms of production of films.107 As a result, the majority of movies shown in the country’s theaters were mostly older Soviet pictures. Subject to the wear and tear owing to frequent projections on old equipment and the lack of proper care accorded to them, old Soviet film prints were the bane of any projectionist’s work. They would frequently break, especially in places where they had ruptured before and had been glued back together. Each print required at least three hours of careful inspection and repair before it could be safely shown to the audience.108
Even Pyongyang’s major movie theaters, such as the famous Taedongmun Cinema, had to constantly deal with this sort of technical issues. The theater’s projectionist, Pak Chu-hwa, relates that one time an especially shabby print of the Soviet
107 “Yŏngwha pogŭp saŏp esŏ hyŏnksin ŭl irŭk’ja!,” 3. 108 Ibid., 4.
film, Don Quixote (1957), landed in his hands. In fact, the copy was in such a poor condition that it broke more than three times during projection. It was since then that he began to carefully inspect every single print that showed any sign of wear and tear before showing it to the public. On one occasion, he had to spend over six hours mending a very old print of another Soviet film, Othello (1955) to be able to show it to his audiences. With his patience and a sense of responsibility, Pak was probably more of an exception than a rule among contemporary projectionists. While the government standard set the limit at 500 projections for every film copy, Pak was able to push this limit to over 2,000 projections of the same print, saving the precious state resources.109 No wonder the majority of circulating prints even of fairly recent productions, such as Don Quixote, would degrade rather rapidly.
According to contemporary sources, however, most projectionists showed neither the diligence, nor the competence of Pak. The lack of qualified film technicians was acutely felt even at the level of provincial projector repair centers (yŏngsang’gi suriso), where film projectors would be sent in from across the province for inspection and repair, often as the last resort, when nothing further could be done by the in-house staff. However, many of these centers, such as the one in the South P’yŏng’an Province, admittedly had often trouble determining what the problems with malfunctioning projectors were in the first place. Nor did they follow any set plan for regular inspections and repairs.110
The situation was both grave and pervasive enough that in August of 1960 the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party mandated additional training for
109 “Yŏngsa kisulwŏn ŭi nundongja” [Projectionist’s pupil], Chosŏn yŏnghwa 6 (1959): 25. 110 “Yŏngwha pogŭp saŏp esŏ hyŏnksin ŭl irŭk’ja!” 4.
technical cadres. The training was to take place at the country’s one and only School of Film Managers (Yŏnghwa kanbu hakkyŏ) located just outside Pyongyang in the vicinity of the North Korean film studio. Opened in August of 1949 as a training place for film projectionists, it continued to operate through the war years, changing to its current name in April of 1954. Following the name change, the school also expanded its focus to offer continuing education and training programs to active managers and technicians. Between 1949 and 1960, over 1,200 film specialists graduated from it (Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2. Students at the Pyongyang School of Film Managers
The new law of 1960 called for increased hours and change in curriculum to ensure that more cadres now could get better training. The students were required to spend a total of 1,620 hours in class plus an additional six weeks of onsite practical training, which entailed working with an actual team of technical staff of a movie theater or a mobile
projection unit.111 Yet, even the new measures could not remedy the situation overnight. As the government made its bet on the training of better technical cadres rather than on a massive upgrade to the rapidly aging national park of film projectors, the technical failures were bound to continue.
Apart from frequent breaks of old film prints during projection, other common issues that plagued almost every exhibitor in the country included problems with image and sound quality. One would have been lucky to see a film from beginning to end in the correct aspect ratio with a clear, sharp image in good focus. Many a time, that was not the case. It was not unusual for the spectator to have to endure through frequent interruptions, fuzzy picture quality, and other surprise glitches, which compromised the integrity of the cinematic experience. 112 Attaining image sharpness and focus, as well as clear sound were the two main goals that seem to have remained most elusive for North Korea’s film exhibitors. Perhaps, it would be unfair, however, to put all the blame on projectionists’ lack of expertise, as the government would. After all, as the pundits admitted themselves, much of the existing equipment and many of the film prints in circulation were in such a poor condition that they were often deemed beyond repair.
Apparently, this state of affairs could not have made for a classic cinematic experience, as outlined above. Contemporary accounts tell of frustrated audiences standing in long lines by ticket counters outside or stranded inside unlit theaters waiting for the show to start often for as long as half an hour past the announced time, while the projectionist would be trying to solve the problem with the malfunctioning equipment or
111 Kim Yong-sŏp, “Saero charananŭn kisul injaedŭl: Yŏnghwa kanbu hakkyŏ rŭl ch’ajasŏ” [Fledgling technical cadres: A visit to a film managers school], Chosŏn yŏnghwa 10 (1960): 15-16.
112 Wang Chong-dŏk, “Yŏngsa kisul ŭi chil ŭl nop’yŏ talla!” [Raise the quality of projection technique!],
another shabby print. Reports flooded from all over the country, both from remote rural areas as well as from major provincial centers, about constant interruptions, glitches, and technical failures. If it was not an issue with equipment, there would have most likely been something else to cause a problem, as it happened, for example, at Myŏngsŏng Cinema in Ch’ŏngjin, North Hamgyŏng Province, where a projectionist showed two reels of the film out of order, causing an uproar in the audience.113
One cannot come to fully appreciate the nature of the moviegoing experience in North Korea during this time without taking into account this situation of chronic and almost universal breakdown and disrepair. In a peculiar reversal of the classic model, film-viewing during this period was largely defined by ruptures and discontinuities. What is even more startling is that this inadvertent “cinema of fits and starts” did not stop audiences from coming back, as we can clearly see from contemporary accounts. On the contrary, they continued to storm their neighborhood movie theaters on a daily basis with unabated enthusiasm.
Were the people coming back despite the ever-present glitches or, perhaps, for their very sake is the question I would like to pose here. Furthermore, while all exhibitors, workplace and neighborhood alike, were accident-prone, it does not stand to reason that a person would flee from one venue and dash to another only to experience the same kind of exasperation over technical problems that continued to plague film projection throughout this period. Given that all other conditions remained the same, there must have been, most probably, something else that set the two types of venue apart. If it was not the accident-ridden apparatus itself, then, perhaps, it was the audiences’ mode of
113 “1 pun ŭi chiyŏni 500 pun ŭl hŏbi” [One-minute delay is a 500-minute waste], Chosŏn yŏnghwa 11 (1958): 44.
engagement with it and the experience it afforded which time and again led them back to the neighborhood theater, a conundrum that undermines the explanatory power of the classical model of film spectatorship and requires the development of a new hermeneutics of filmgoing based on the further study of this, in many ways, very unique historical moment.