The Pusan International Film Festival: South Korean cinema and globalization

Abstract

This book is the first book-length study of a non-Western film festival. While studies of film festivals were still relatively uncommon in the 1990s, the new millennium has seen a growing academic interest in these festive events where culture often goes hand in hand with commerce. Recently, a variety of articles, book chapters, monographs and dissertations have been devoted to various aspects of the film festival phenomenon. However, very little primary empirical research has been conducted to date on non-Western film festivals. Therefore, this project is original and timely and will complement existing publications, without duplicating any. This project argues that the initiation, development and growth of the Pusan International Film Festival need to be understood as the result of a productive tension between the demands of the local, the national, and the regional, and the festival's efforts to serve these different constituencies. The book also reflects the complexities brought about by the rapid transformation of the South Korean film industry which has striven to reach out to the global market since the late 1990s by closely looking at the first international film festival, PIFF in South Korea. As this book focuses upon PIFF's vital role in linking with its national and regional film industries, it will offer a fresh perspective towards the existing discussions on the "Korean Wave" in the Asian region. Drawing on a wide range of primary materials and exclusive interviews, the book offers a unique and original perspective on the film festival phenomenon that will be of use to scholars of East Asian cinema, transnational media flows, and contemporary Asian culture more broadly.