Anna Broinowski - Aim High in Creation! - A One-of-a-Kind Journey Inside North Korea's Propaganda Machine

And on both sides of the fence, the propaganda war continues to rage. North Korea releases videos of New York being nuked by Taepodong-2 rockets and calls Obama “a monkey in a tropical forest,” while the West runs satirical spoofs about Kim Jong Un being voted “the sexiest man alive” and archaeologists finding a “unicorn lair” in Pyongyang. Sony attracts audiences to its Kim Jong Un assassination comedy The Interview by accusing North Korea of hacking, and agencies as august as The Telegraph and the Huffington Post continue to push the North Korean horror story from every conceivable angle—giving equal weight to the UN’s exhaustively fact-checked reports on the country’s human-rights abuses and completely unsubstantiated rumours.

On May 17, 2014, Chosun Ilbo’s widely reprinted article about Kim Jong Un executing his ex-girlfriend and members of her Unhasu orchestra for “making porn” was kiboshed, when Hyon Song Wol, the woman in question, appeared alive and well on North Korean television to salute Kim Jong Un for his “heavenly trust and warm care.” In January 2015, Shin Dong Hyuk, the survivor of Camp 14, recanted parts of his story, admitting he hadn’t spent his entire North Korean life in the gulag and had not been tortured at age thirteen. In May 2014, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who has been to North Korea several times, warned that the North Korean rumour mill was “out of control.” This was a problem, he said, “because we know so little about Kim Jong Un and his true intentions and governing style.”

I agree with Richardson. In fact, I’d love to swap travel stories with him sometime and hear his theory about the dancing people on Moran Hill. Fuelling the North Korean rumour mill does not just damage our chances of finding a more productive and diplomatic way of dealing with the country; it also harms the people who, through no fault of their own, happen to live there. Mr. Pak and the filmmakers I met deserve the courtesy of being understood before they are damned as guilty by association. They may be “ignorant” by the hyper-connected standards of the free world, but they are also intelligent, generous, principled human beings, who, as Nick Bonner observed in Pyongyang, “love their kids, and just want to get through the day.”

I am no apologist for the Kims and am deeply grateful that I live in the West. But I hope the next time you see a report on Fox News or YouTube accusing North Korea of executing two hundred Christians by flame-thrower, or feeding a disgraced general to starving dogs, you’ll remember Mr. Pak and his friends. I hope you’ll acknowledge, as I have, that the truths of their country are more complex than what we’re normally told—and that while the gulags and malnutrition rates are both horrifically real, North Korea is also home to at least sixteen million people who, despite the propaganda they’re fed and the restrictions they have to endure, are trying to lead normal lives. Lives full of dreams and desires and love, about which we never, ever hear. I hope you’ll endorse Mark Twain’s view that travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness—and keep an open mind.

I’m lying on my couch as I write this, watching the evening settle in behind the bowling club trees. The gas mine in Sydney Park is history, thanks to the courageous campaigning of Stop CSG Sydney. My daughter is spending the night with her father, with whom I now have a distant, but civilised, friendship. My time in Pyongyang, a place so removed from everything I know of the world, feels more like a dream than a memory. If it weren’t for the media visa stamped in my passport, I’d wonder if I’d actually been.

But then I see Mr. Pak, my silver-haired mentor, holding my hand on the edge of that dirty highway. And I know that his tears, and the compassion he showed me, will stay with me forever.

MASSIVE GRATITUDE TO MY WONDERFUL AGENTS, Fiona Inglis and Dan Lazar, inspirational publishers Cate Blake and Ben Ball at Penguin and Cal Barksdale at Arcade, and my impeccable editor Nikki Lusk. Thank you all for your patience, wisdom and belief.

I’m also hugely grateful to my fearless Aim High in Creation! collaborators: Dean O’Flaherty and Kate Breen at Unicorn Films, Mark Woods and Claire Dobbin at the Melbourne International Film Festival, the Solrun Hoaas Documentary Foundation, Alan Erson and the ABC, Ross Woods and Sam Griffin at Screen Australia, Dan Fill at Chocolate Liberation Front, Ruth Hessey, Pat Fiske and OzDox, Piers Nightingale at HighPoint, Johannes Schonherr, Nate Bolotin at XYZ, Jill McNab at Vendetta, and our generous crew and subjects in Seoul. For their talent, chutzpah, and heart, I thank actors Susan Prior, Peter O’Brien, Elliott Weston, Kathryn Beck, and Matt Zeremes, DOPs Geoffrey Simpson and Justine Kerrigan, composer Dale Cornelius, sound wizards Craig Carter and Andrew Neil, photographer Wendy McDougall, editors Melanie Sanford, Cyndi Clarkson, and Karryn de Cinque, and the entire Aussie cast and crew.

Nothing would have been written without Mary Ann Jolley, who gave me that present, and the brilliant Nick Bonner (best flea-market companion ever!) and his dynamic team at Koryo Tours—who made our shoot in the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea possible. In Pyongyang, I am indebted to the kind assistance and support of the Korean Film Export & Import Corporation, the hard-working staff at Korfilm and the Yangakkdo Hotel, our delightful DPRK film crew, and the extraordinary filmmakers and guides who embraced our anti–Coal Seam Gas mission with generosity, humour and grace. Thank you, Mr. Pak, Mr. Ri, Ms. Yun, Mr. Pei, Mr. O, and all your colleagues, for sharing your world, and showing us that filmmakers, wherever they are, are family.

For her compassion, perspicacity, and a trip I’ll never forget, deepest thanks to producer Lizzette Atkins. For her comradeship, beautiful shots, and surviving the Underfloor with a smile, I thank cinematographer Nicola Daley. For defeating the Sydney Park gas mine and fighting CSG across Australia, my loyalty and respect goes to Stop CSG Sydney, Lock the Gate, Brian Monk and his family, activist Tony Pickard, and courageous farmers and environmentalists everywhere.

Last and not least, loving thanks to my multifaceted family: Aline and Flav, Sonya, Brett, Hex and the boys, Snake and Max, Grish and Nina, Miranda and Scotty, Roy, Shirley, and Duncan, Henny and Mary, Mary Alice and Susie, and my parents, Richard and Alison. Arlene—you’re glorious. Grace—couldn’t have done it withoutcha. Darling Ava—you are my sun.

ANNA BROINOWSKI FELL INTO FILMMAKING BY accident—when she unearthed Japan’s queer, Yakuza, and Otaku subcultures in the cult hit Hell Bento!! She’s directed ever since. Anna’s latest documentary Aim High in Creation! sold to Netflix USA and inspired her DIY North Korean propaganda film workshop, which she travels around the world. Other films include Forbidden Lie$, about hoax author Norma Khouri; Helen’s War, about anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott; and Sexing the Label . They’ve won some shiny things, including three AFIs, a Silverdocs Award, the Rome Film Festival Cult Prize, a Walkley, the Al Jazeera Golden Award, a Russian Film Critics’ prize, Best Director at Films Des Femmes, and Best Nonfiction Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America. Before filmmaking, Anna was an actor and rock violinist. She dropped out of Law, toured her bilingual play The Gap to Japan, and has written for The Guardian, BBC Magazine, Tokyo Journal, The Sydney Morning Herald, Black + White , and others. This year, Anna received a PhD from Macquarie University for her thesis on documentary and deception. Born in Tokyo and raised in the Philippines, Burma, Canberra, Japan, and Iran, Anna currently lives in Sydney with her daughter, a wise Glaswegian, and a three-legged cat called Tripod.