Overviews and prospects of Korea-Japan co-productions
The Korean Film Council (KOFIC, Chairman: KIM Eui-suk) will hold the ‘Korea-Japan Ko-Production Forum 2013’ over December 9th and 10th at the Novotel Ambassador Hotel in Haeundae, Busan, during KO-PRODUCTION, the annual Korea-Japan business meeting event. Every year, KOFIC offers a development fund for Korea-Japan co-productions, and for this year’s forum, all participants who have attended with projects since 2007 have been invited to participate again. The forum program includes exclusive seminars, co-production case studies and business meetings, while other events such as lectures open to the public will also be held.
Monday will be composed of project case studies looking at three co-productions followed by two different seminars. The case studies will examine current co-production projects where LEE Eun-kyong, LEE Seung-joo and KIM Young-nam will each discuss their films. Following the case studies, the first seminar will explore the state of Japanese film production with speaker KITTA Toshihiro from Dragonheart International. KITTA has been working on co-productions with Korea for some time, starting with PARK Chan-wook’s I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK in 2006. Of equal interest will be the second seminar, which will offer a screenwriter’s perspective from the famed writer of Linda Linda Linda (2005), KOSUKE Mukai. KOSUKE will cover the importance and power of screenplays for Korean-Japanese co-productions. These two seminars will be moderated by Jonathan KIM, the CEO of Hanmac Culture Corporation.
The second day will be even more packed with the inclusion of meeting sessions. While the meetings are happening at one side of the hotel, the day’s sessions will also resume in the Iris Hall. Moderated by Romeo NOH of Wellmade STARM, the day will focus on how to productively execute original screenplays from Japan. OKADA Wataru of the large publishing company Kadokawa, who is also the producer of The Last Chushingura (2010), will lead the first part of the afternoon. Then YAMAGAMI Tetsujiro, founder of Siglo Ltd. and who is known for producing Wandering Home (2010) as well as distributing Old Partner (2009) and Poetry (2010), will be leading the next session. On the same day, KIM Sung-su, the director of Running Wild (2006), will show the trailer of his soon to be released co-production titled Genome Hazard, which will be followed by a case study and a Q&A session.
The ‘Korea-Japan Ko-Production Forum’ will serve as an important networking hub to share invaluable information between the Korean and Japanese film industries as international co-productions are on the rise. For any questions about the forum, please email
aergdoo89@kofic.or.kr.