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The Juche Idea

Play trailer Poster for The Juche Idea 2008 1h 2m Documentary Comedy Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 7 Reviews 41% Popcornmeter 50+ Ratings
A South Korean video artist in North Korea tries to revitalize Juche cinema.

Critics Reviews

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Mike Hale New York Times 05/27/2010
3.5/5
Meant to be a comedy, one that cuts two ways: mocking the strictures placed on moviemakers in both Communist and capitalist systems. Go to Full Review
S. James Snyder Time Out 05/26/2010
3/5
In the director's hands, these societal passion plays and "documentaries" offer a terrifying, top-down perversion of art itself -- another insidious extension of politics by other means. Go to Full Review
Lauren Wissot Slant Magazine 05/25/2010
2.5/4
Jim Finn has managed to spoof not just easy-target Kim, but also the very notion of artists in residence making ever more obscure, inaccessible, and pretentious work. Go to Full Review
Vadim Rizov Filmmaker Magazine 01/24/2023
Finn’s droll blend of actual North Korean propaganda and appropriately low-rent video interpolations... Go to Full Review
Mark Keizer Boxoffice Magazine 06/01/2010
3.5/5
Densely constructed and pretty damn brilliant. Go to Full Review
Avi Offer NYC Movie Guru 05/26/2010
7.36/10
An unconventional and wildly imaginative combination of humor, satire and faux documentary as a delightful and refreshing medium to enlighten the audience about Juche. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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08/15/2012 This film will make you feel baffled and manipulated, just as the director intended, as it assaults you with a barrage of propaganda made both by the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea and by Jim Finn in Upstate New York. And you will laugh. See more 10/11/2011 interesting ... maybe too arthouse for me See more 10/01/2011 A bizarre, funny, and a bit obtuse documentary/mockumentary about the philosophies of Juche cinema See more 06/22/2010 Will the words "Fuck", "Cunt", "Shit", "Cum" and "Goddamn" be censored? I hope to Christ not. They're good words. Oh, and this is a good film. See more 05/28/2010 another play to all the people of the world bla bla bla See more 09/10/2009 This is a remarkable film: a sort of free form essay on cinema, North Korean philosophy, and awesomely corny jokes on socialism and socialist art. This is probably more formally ambitious than Finn's prior work, the amazing Interkosmos, and in spirit reminds me a lot of Dusan Makavejev. I can't really think of anyone else who exhibits this much intellectual ambition to understand the differences between socialism and capitalism and who has such a great since of humor about it. See more Read all reviews
The Juche Idea

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Movie Info

Synopsis A South Korean video artist in North Korea tries to revitalize Juche cinema.
Director
Jim Finn
Producer
Jim Finn
Screenwriter
Jim Finn
Genre
Documentary, Comedy
Original Language
Korean
Runtime
1h 2m