KOREA BEWARE! 10 MYTHS ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL CIRCUIT

For the past 30 years, film festivals have increasingly become the launch pad into distribution for non-English language cinema. But festivals are a western (more specifically, European) invention, which still set the rules and dominate the game, even with the huge rise in the past 20 years of events elsewhere in the world. South Korean cinema first started making an impression at festivals - as part of the West's general "discovery" of non-Japanese East Asian cinema - in the early '80s, with films by directors like Im Kwon-taek and Lee Doo-young. But it's only during the past five years or so that a new wave of filmmaking has re-drawn western attention to the country. That's created a whole new excitement in the industry at hooking into this powerful mechanism. And as with any new journey, it's also created a host of misunderstandings as people learn the ropes. So here are 10 popular myths about that rambunctious, highly personal and unpredictable beast known as "the festival circuit" - from my own perspective of covering it as a journalist and reviewer for the past quarter-century:

1. FILM FESTIVALS ARE TRULY INTERNATIONAL EVENTS.

Don't be fooled by the word "international" in most festivals' official titles. Despite having foreign advisors and scouts, the final selection is done by locals and reflects national, not international, tastes in cinema. In that respect, festivals are a kind of discreet cultural warfare. It's no accident that the only two South Korean directors who've made it into Cannes' Official Selection (i.e. the Competition, and non-competitive sidebar Un Certain Regard) in the past six years are Im Kwon-taek and Hong Sang-soo: Im's recent excursions into colourful cultural artifacts ("Chunhyang," "Chihwaseon") perfectly fit the French liking for decorative Asian exotica, and Hong's oblique, metaphysical movies ("The Power of Kangwon Province," "Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors") chime strongly with French filmmaking sensibilities.

2. WINNING A PRIZE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

Definitely not. Prizes provide an immediate publicity bonus - and sometimes some money from the festival or filmmaker's home country - but don't necessarily help a movie commercially in the longer run. Juries are unreliable, sometimes politically biased or manipulated, and often composed of people with little knowledge of world cinema. Though painful at the time, the ridiculous decision by last year's Locarno jury to ignore Kim Ki-duk's "Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn...and Spring" - on the basis that an established director didn't need a prize - has happily not stopped the movie from gaining both distribution and wide acclaim.

3. FESTIVAL HEADS ARE EXPERTS IN WORLD CINEMA.

They're not. And when it comes to "specialist" areas, such as Asian cinema, they often rely heavily on national promotional organisations to pre-select films for viewing during an annual field trip, or on local advisors/critics who may have their own agendas. Without an influential advocate who is close to a festival's hierarchy, a relatively unknown film will stand little chance of gaining a prominant slot in a major festival. Festivals are notorious for regularly favouring the same names rather than spreading the net much wider.

4. CANNES IS THE ULTIMATE PINNACLE TO ASPIRE TO.

Not necessarily. Given its colossal concentration of media, and the magic of its name, Cannes can provide a powerful ego-boost for filmmakers. It can also wreck them - at least, temporarily. (Stories of hyped-up directors in tears after press shows or market screenings are legion.) Unlike any other festival, Cannes is basically an industry event, not a public one, and the extreme positions taken by critics in the pressure-cooker atmosphere can often destroy a film in the short term or prove a waste of money - given the high cost of al-important promotion - for little return. Most of the press concentrate only on Cannes' Competition and, to a much lesser extent, Un Certain Regard. The impressive "Happy End" screened almost unnoticed in the tiny Critics' Week section in 2000.

5. CANNES SHOWCASES THE BEST OF WORLD CINEMA EVERY YEAR.

It doesn't. It showcases works by established names; favours productions with French financial involvement, French sales companies or French distributors; and appeals largely to French middle-class tastes. It is not a reliable bellweather for developments in world cinema: this is the festival that rejected, among others, "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," "Memories of Murder" and "Spring, Summer..." Berlin is a better showcase for harder-edged fare, Venice for outre fare, Toronto for more accessible, commercial fare (but see No. 6).

6. TORONTO AND SUNDANCE ARE THE GATEWAYS TO THE NORTH AMERICAN MARKET.

So what? Foreign-language movies make up an infinitesimal portion of the North American market, and the portion is still shrinking; in percentage terms, and audience reach, Europe is a richer market. Sundance is primarily a navel-gazing, U.S. event for U.S. movies; its international section gets little publicity and even less press coverage. Toronto is basically a "festival of festivals," a useful North American platform in tandem with a European one (Venice, Locarno), but not a place to solo world-premiere a foreign-language movie. Toronto is so huge (over 250 handpicked features) that the North American press focus on the new U.S. movies. Toronto's annual National Cinema sidebars, such as the South Korean one in 2002, pass almost without notice.

7. BEING IN COMPETITION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

It depends on the movie. Festivals' competitions attract the most media coverage, as prizes are at stake and most press don't have the time or inclination to explore the rest of a festival. But Competition films are expected to be neither too commercial (unless they're American) nor too specialised (unless they have a serious social message). Press streamed out of "JSA" (Berlin, 2001) after 20 minutes, as it was considered too mainstream; in the Panorama sidebar it would have had a better reception.

8. THE DIRECTOR KNOWS BEST. Rarely.

The job of "placing" a film in a festival should be left to those whose job it is to know best - the sales company (if the film has one) or a producer or national promo organisation (if it doesn't). These people tour festivals and markets and should - if they're allowed to stay in their jobs long enough - have built up the necessary personal contacts and on-the-ground knowledge. (This can take years: in the West, influential sellers and national promoters have spent decades in their jobs.) The decision with "Turning Gate," to reject a slot in Cannes' Un Certain Regard in 2002 (on the basis that, after two films in Cannes - "Kangwon" and "Virgin" - the director should "step up" to Competition) essentially consigned the film to oblivion, especially when Venice subsequently rejected it also. In this case, Cannes' offer was right for such a remarkable, but highly specialised, movie.

9. SOUTH KOREAN CINEMA IS "HOT," SO THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT IS ITS OYSTER.

Unfortunately, not. South Korean cinema is certainly "hot" but, outside East Asia, only among a relatively small band of specialists. Over-estimating its profile has sometimes led sales companies, producers or directors to try to play off major festivals against each other, sometimes with disastrous results. The international career of "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" was set back by a year when the film turned down an offer by Berlin and later tried for Cannes (which then rejected it, followed by Venice). "Girls' Night Out" had a similar fate. Festival selectors don't like being taken for granted or being traded off against each other. (They often like to play games against each other, but that's another story...)

10. LOCAL SUCCESS = FESTIVAL INVITATIONS.

Hardly ever. Niche festivals specialising in Asian cinema will probably invite local hits, but the major western festivals - and, alas, more and more "banana"-programmed East Asian festivals - couldn't care less. In fact, poor local box-office (or even better, local censorship problems) is almost a badge of honour in the West. "Take Care of My Cat," which flopped in South Korea, was so popular with European festivals because it came closest to the socio-realist style of Euro cinema. Western festivals prefer films which support their pre-existing notions of what Asian cinema should be.

* The hard reality of all this is that stories in South Korea's media about this or that film attending a festival and winning prizes, or laudatory reviews by specialised critics in foreign media, gives a false impression of South Korean cinema's international standing. Beyond East Asia, sales to distributors remain few, and audiences small; U.S. distribution is almost negligible, and many of the announced U.S. remakes are still in development hell. Even if the re-makes do happen, South Korean cinema's profile will not necessarily benefit. Most general critics and audiences would be hard pressed to name a director beyond Im Kwon-taek (if even him), and no Korean filmmakers have the international currency of Chinese directors like Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Wong Kar-wai, Edward Yang or Hou Hsiao-hsien. Japan's cinema has consistently been on the festival circuit since the early '50s, Hong Kong's since 1979, and China's and Taiwan's since the mid-'80s. Each of those countries has a perceptible "image" in western minds, for either a particular genre or a style of filmmaking, plus one or two key names that identify it. South Korean cinema's enormous diversity - from quality mainstream to artier fare, and across all genres - is actually its biggest handicap, and its most famous name (Im Kwon-taek) is totally unrepresentative of where South Korean cinema "is" now. Where it "is," to my mind, is in the first full flush of a remarkable transformation, generating the kind of excitement among foreign film enthusiasts that we felt with Hong Kong, then Taiwan and then China during the late '70s to mid-'80s, with every year bringing a dizzying number of interesting movies by a first-time filmmakers. Though some names have already emerged as considerable talents (Park Chan-wook, E J-yong, Hong Sang-soo, Im Sang-soo, Kim Ki-duk, Kang Woo-suk, Kim Jee-woon, Kwak Kyung-taek, Hur Jin-ho, Kim Sang-jin, Lee Chang-dong), only time will tell which ones have the necessary staying-power to enter the general international consciousness. It's still early days. Only three-and-a-half years ago, in the Cannes market, I remember attending a screening of Kim Ki-duk's "The Isle" that had only a handful of people. And how many people now remember Chinese directors like Zhang Junzhao, Wu Tianming, Wu Ziniu, Zhang Zeming, Tseng Chuang-hsiang or Wan Jen, once considered up-and-coming talents in the '80s? The messages from all this? For filmmakers: concentrate on your home and regional markets and treat the festival circuit as a bonus, not as an end in itself (beware the Taiwan experience!). For sales companies: accept the most suitable - not necessarily the most "prestigious" - invitation for a film, and let word of mouth and your impressively organised industry do the rest. And for South Korean audiences: continue supporting your own cinema to give it a strong financial basis of its own, rather than be dependant on the shifting tastes and local concerns of festival programmers and foreign buyers. Western filmaking has never looked East for "validation" and Korean cinema should not do the reverse. It's rich enough, inventive enough and exciting enough not to need it.

Based in London, Derek ELLEY is Senior Intl. Film Critic of Hollywood showbiz paper VARIETY, and has been writing about East Asian cinema - and visiting the region - for 30 years. He writes here in a personal capacity.