— Are there any specific types of characters in North Korean cinema that are found everywhere?
— If we are talking about a sinister Japanese businessman, or about a greedy landowner-collaborator, or about a rich man in general, who oppresses the poor with his wealth, then, in my opinion, these types are not North Korea specific.
In this sense, North Korean cinema is quite the opposite, as well as the USSR's cinema, which has always shown quite a lot of strong female figures. North Korea is formally a very emancipated society. It should be understood that, for example, among the disciplines devoted to the history of 1 I, II and III Kims' revolutionary activities, the history of the revolutionary activities of Comrade Kim Jong-Su, who was Kim Il-sung's wife and Kim Jong-il's mother, who was a partisan, whom Kim Il-sung then met, is also studied. A certain image, relatively speaking, of the mother of Korea as a strong independent woman, ready to fight for her Homeland and generally not giving herself offense — this is formally quite common in North Korea.
— How do they find actors to fill the villains' part?
— It is rather transparent. Firstly, the party said "Take the role of the villain", secondly, Americans were usually played by deserters. It is not commonly known that after the Korean War not only the Northerners would stay in the South, but the Southerners and some Americans would stay in the North. Later on, some people tried to run off to North Korea, others tried to run off to the South, including a few American soldiers. Those would usually play the American rascals in the cinema. I don't know whether the tradition (which allegedly bloomed in China) remained: in order to make the negative character prominently bad, they would cast someone like a secretary of the studio's party. I really don't know that, I've been introduced to the information, but its source is unreliable.
— Are there any special criteria for selecting directors and screenwriters? How does censorship work?
— So, it is clear that there is censorship. Here you can focus on common Soviet or Chinese stamps. As far as I understand, more attention is paid to the preliminary work, so it's not the director who shoots the film first and then it gets censored, but first the project is being worked on, which is the reason it is filmed. As for what the selection system looks like and where directors and screenwriters are trained, I do not know. I only know that they have their own universities where such training is carried out.
— How is cinema developing in North Korea due to censorship?
— One should not approach North Korea with the stamps of European cinema. It is clear that this is, relatively speaking, the cinema of the classic authoritarian regime. Here, again, you can focus not even on Soviet, but Chinese versions of Mao's time, where, of course, there was no ideological discord, because there could not be.
— Does all the cinema in the DPRK support the regime and serve as a propaganda tool?
— I am not aware of the existence of North Korean dissidents-directors. Moreover, in North Korea, cinema, like literature, like everything else, has always been perceived as an additional way of indoctrination.
— Are there any particular features that you or the world community of critics highlight that exist in the cinema of the DPRK, but are not common for world cinema?
— It's hard to say because North Korean cinema is quite poorly represented in the young cinema market due to sanctions, embargoes and general ideas, and a lot of people perfectly understand what they will see, without even watching North Korean cinema itself.