The Juche Idea / FIlm School Radio interview with Director Jim Finn

Jim Finn’s inspired real-life story of the South Korean director kidnapped in the 70's to invigorate the North Korean film industry, THE JUCHE IDEA 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. Jim Finn's THE JUCHE IDEA is an uproarious and provocative deconstruction of North Korean propaganda and philosophy. Mixing together eye-popping archival footage with deadpan re-enactments, Finn has created a complex docu-fiction that is equally thought-provoking and entertaining. Translated as self-reliance, Juche (CHOO-chay) is a hybrid of Confucian and Stalinist thought that Kim Jong-il adapted from his father and applied to the entire culture. In The Juche Idea, a sympathetic South Korean filmmaker visits a North Korean artists' colony to bring Juche ideas into the 21st century. She ends up producing hilariously stilted shorts, including a nonsensical sci-fi story and the enigmatic "Dentures of Imperialism.” THE JUCHE IDEA is both sardonic satire and historical excavation, an exuberant collage that reveals the absurdity at the heart of Kim-Jong-il's regime. Director Jim Finn joins us for a free-wheeling conversation on the wildly imaginative nature of his filmmaking, Ulysses S, Grant as the most prolific killer of fascist… ever, and the importance of Juche for all comrades. Available to watch at: OVID.TV Available for purchase at: kinolorber.com/film/thejucheidea