The cinema in Korea and France

Résumé du document

South Korea and France are two countries which belong to two continents with different cultures. South Korea is situated in Asia and has known, since the end of the Korean War (1953), a rapid development but had some difficulties in implementing democracy. Now, it is considered as a dynamic and democratic country which belongs to the most dynamic region of the world. France is situated in Europe, and is considered as a developed country but currently, it has a lot of economic and political difficulties like the other European countries considered as 'Old Europe'. However, these countries have the ability to be two of the only countries which can resist the United States cinema. In the current world, the economy is becoming globalized. But in this context of globalization, the cultural diversity is threatened and cinema is the perfect example of this issue. In fact, cinema is the particular sector because it gathers industry and art. During the last few decades, we have seen new kinds of movies. This report gives detailed information on the kind of movies which are popular in these modern days.

Extraits

[...] The movie was L'arroseur arrosé (The sprinkled sprinkler). But until Georges Méliès, the movies were only documentaries. In 1902 he created the first science-fiction film: Le voyage dans la lune trip to the moon). Lumière, Gaumont and Pathé created the first three large cinema companies and during the silent era, France is the largest cinema producer in the world of the worldwide films) Some directors like Alice Guy Blaché or Maurice Tourneur even succeeded I having a great career in the United States. [...]

[...] About the French cinema, it has lost its hegemony and its prestige. When people talk about French cinema out the French soil, it's more about its old and classical movies. But these last years, it has been recovering a little bit of its prestige in the world but especially in Europe which is its first customer for its film exportations. But I think that each country could take the other in example to improve its weaknesses. Korean government could develop and subsidize a network of art theatres in order to increase the exhibition of art movies in Korea. [...]

[...] The latter saw its national cinema disappeared totally. However, this decrease in tickets was really important (1947: 424 million tickets / 1992: 116 million) and affected a lot the French production. Moreover, the blockbusters became more and more famous and liked by the population. In 1986, for the first time since the 1950s, the admissions for American movies outstripped the admissions for French films. Title: Number of tickets 1975-1998 Grey line = American Movies Black line = French Movies Source: Gourdineau report During this crisis, Jack Lang was Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1992 and played an important role in the current French cinema industry. [...]

[...] Because of the lack of quality, the foreign movies remained more profitable and successful. Furthermore, during the 1970s and the military martial law, the Korean films was controlled by the government. The effects were a huge decrease in the audience and the bankruptcy of 20 film companies out of 23. In 1980, only 91 films were produced. In 1987, the last revision of this law fixed this quota to 146 days a year. But, in 1985, there was the Korea-US film agreement. [...]

[...] The development of a local film industry With India, South Korea and France are the only countries where the national movies have sometimes better market shares than American films on their soil. We can explain that by the importance of a lot of different actors such as the government, the production houses or the TV channels and so on. To understand that, I will start to study the case of South Korea and how the history of the country had influenced the Korean film industry. Then I will deal with the French case and its cultural exception. [...]