Aim High in Creation!: A One-of-a-Kind Journey inside North Korea's Propaganda Machine (Hardcover)

Aim High in Creation!: A One-of-a-Kind Journey inside North Korea's Propaganda Machine By Anna Broinowski Cover Image
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Description


An Authentic Glimpse of a North Korea We’ve Never Seen Before, by a Prize-Winning Filmmaker

Anna Broinowski is the only Westerner ever granted full access to North Korea’s propaganda machine, its film industry. Aim High in Creation! is her funny, surreal, insightful account of her twenty-one-day apprenticeship there. At the same time it is a fresh-eyed look, beyond stereotypes, at life in that most secretive of societies.

When Anna learned that fracking had invaded downtown Sydney and a coal seam gas well was planned for Sydney Park, she had a brilliant idea: she would seek guidance for a kryptonite-powerful anti-fracking movie from the world’s greatest propaganda factory, apart from Hollywood. After two years of trying, she was allowed to make her case in Pyongyang and was granted full permission to film. She worked closely with the leading lights of North Korean cinema, even playing an American in a military thriller. “Filmmakers are family,” Kim Jong-il’s favorite director told her, and a love of nature and humanity unites peoples. Interviewing loyalists and defectors alike, Anna explored the society she encountered. She offers vivid, sometimes hilarious descriptions of bizarre disconnects and warm friendships in a world without advertisements or commercial culture. Her book, like the prize-winning documentary that resulted from her visit, is a thoughtful plea for better understanding.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

About the Author


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 ATOM Award-winning 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 award-winning 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 AFI Awards, a Silverdocs Award, the Rome Film Festival Cult Prize, a Walkley Award, 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 school, 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. In 2016, 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.

Praise For…


"An ingenious method of penetrating the most isolated country in the world allows an Australian filmmaker access to what proves to be a surprisingly sympathetic North Korean soul . . . Startling . . . Experiencing North Korean 'method acting' in the most visceral way." —Kirkus

"The Director is the Commander of the Creative Group. . . . One must Aim High in Creation" —On the Art of the Cinema, Kim Jong Il

"An ingenious method of penetrating the most isolated country in the world allows an Australian filmmaker access to what proves to be a surprisingly sympathetic North Korean soul . . . Startling . . . Experiencing North Korean 'method acting' in the most visceral way." —Kirkus

"The Director is the Commander of the Creative Group. . . . One must Aim High in Creation" —On the Art of the Cinema, Kim Jong Il
Product Details
ISBN: 9781628726763
ISBN-10: 1628726768
Publisher: Arcade
Publication Date: November 1st, 2016
Pages: 308
Language: English