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'We were all propagandists; the only differences were our goals.'
Looking for respite from her crumbling marriage and determined to stop a coal seam gas mine near her Sydney home, filmmaker Anna Broinowski finds wisdom and inspiration in the strangest of places: North Korea. Guided by the late Dear Leader Kim Jong Il's manifesto The Cinema and Directing, Broinowski, in a world first, travels to Pyongyang to collaborate with North Korea's top directors, composers and movie stars to make a powerful anti-fracking propaganda film.
The Director is the Commander centres around the bizarre twenty-one day shoot Broinowski did in North Korea to make her documentary, Aim High in Creation! She meets and befriends artists and apparatchiki, defectors and loyalists, and gains a new insight into the world's most secretive regime. Her adventures are set against a parallel exploration of propaganda in general: both in its ham-fisted North Korean form and its sophisticated but no less pervasive incarnation in the corporate West.
Funny, multi-layered and utterly compelling, The Director is the Commander is a gripping account of an extraordinary journey inside a nation we can usually only see from the outside looking in.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Calling Australia Home
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 24 May 2015; (p. 6)
— Review of The Director Is the Commander 2015 single work autobiography
-
Calling Australia Home
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 24 May 2015; (p. 6)
— Review of The Director Is the Commander 2015 single work autobiography
Awards
- 2016 longlisted Kibble Literary Awards — Nita May Dobbie Award
- 2016 shortlisted Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards — Award for Non-Fiction
- 2015 winner 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature — The Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize
- 2015 shortlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
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cNorth Korea,cKorea, East Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,