First China-DPRK movie to be screened in August

Meet in Pyongyang, the first film co-produced by China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, will be shown in China starting on August 3.

The movie is mainly about a friendship between a pair of dancers, one of whom is from China and the other from the DPRK.

Though it is the first such production the DPRK has made with China, it is not the first it has made with partners from other countries.

Since its foundation in 1948, the country has worked with partners in the Soviet Union, Japan, Italy and the United Kingdom to make various films, according to Kim Ung Gol, director of the co-production department of the DPRK's State Film Bureau.

The country produced three films with partners in the Soviet Union. The first one told the story of a Soviet officer who, in 1945, caught a grenade that was thrown at Kim Il-sung, thereby protecting an audience that was listening to one of Kim's speeches.

According to Kim Ung Gol, the film was based on a true story and the officer is esteemed as a hero in the DPRK.

The other two films the DPRK co-produced with the Soviet Union were also about the two countries' friendship, Kim said.

The only DPRK film to contain a performance by a Japanese actor was shot in the 1980s. It was about the yearning that people from the Republic of Korea and the DPRK have to see their countries unified.

In 1988, filmmakers from Italy made an action film set in the DPRK, and a crew from the UK made a film about a DPRK acrobatics performer.

The DPRK does not have copyrights for those three films, which were therefore never released in its theaters.