Coming In From The Cold – Time For A New Nollywood!
By Iwedi Ojinmah - TheTimesOfNigeria.com
Published: February 14, 2007
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It is 2007 and Nigeria sits in the cross hairs of a sniper. Seemingly oblivious to that fact she remains locked in the assassin’s scope as they speculate, ponder and wait for the right moment – finger on the trigger. However, before you commence building your bomb shelters and start sending your loved ones back to the village, we ask that you pause for a moment because this has nothing to do with a war; but rather a conscientious effort by one group of people to overtake another ones role as a major player in a specific industry. And we thus get to the crux of the matter – which is South Korea and her growing Film Industry.

 

Despite a rich tradition in Cinema in both Koreas -North and South- the industry has always been subjected to the whim of political control….be it either under Kim Senior then or Kim Junior now in the North and in the South first by her Japanese occupiers and then as well also by direct domestic governmental interference. Research indicates that 2 things would then happen almost simultaneously after a period of virtual dormancy that would change things for the better in the South. First of all with the signing of the armistice in 1953 then President Rhee created a shelter excluding the entire industry from taxation. Secondly, came the re release of Korea’s first movie ever “Chunhyang-Jeon” by director Lee Kyu-hwan in 1955. This time unlike the initial 1921 version,  a recuperating  war weary Korea embraced the film en masse and we are told that within 60 days of it release, 10% of the countries population had seen the film.

From these 2 significant moments the industry has blossomed with such alacrity that it is safe to predict that it is on course to surpass Nollywood and become the 3^rd biggest Film Industry in the world behind Holly and Bollywood’s. Sure there were brief periods of derailment caused by the ascension of President Park Chung Hee and the implementation of the draconian Motion Picture Law of 1963 aimed to monitor everything from obscenity to pro communist rhetoric; as well as a period in the 70’s when the Government tried to encourage and manipulate the production of propaganda films - but all of that too would wilt under the pressure of the now very dedicated film audience who wanted real live scenarios on the screen.

Anyway by 1960’s the Bell Awards also known as the Korean Academy Awards had been introduced to acknowledge and reward the slew of productions that were now being churned out with the regularity of a sun rise and the industry has never looked back. Unlike in Nigeria where there is virtually no support for Film Distributors  – the meat and potatoes of the industry everywhere else – lawmakers in South Korea have passed  bills authorizing the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to impose a 3%-5% tax on movie tickets in order to raise circa $430 million to support local the local cinema industry.

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