a few gentle ripples in the western media last month, since the folks at boingboing discovered that the korean film archive* (kofa) has, for the last two years, been uploading onto their “classic korean film theater” youtube channel nearly 100 classic korean films from the 1930s onwards, many of them not available on dvd, but that is not the interesting thing about kofa at all. what is interesting to me is that kofa also runs a mobile cinema outreach programme. in singapore there is no shortage of cinemas, and with a little bit of internet piracy you can generally supplement yourself with many other films you might want to see. if you go to an open air film it’s something fun and a tiny bit nostalgic, you make it a night out with friends. korea has some 800 movie theatres, almost all of which are multi-screen affairs concentrated in the largest cities. in smaller towns there are few theatres (single screen) and limited availability of significant films, and the undeveloped rural areas are almost entirely culturally-isolated when it comes to film access. since 2001 kofa has operated two mobile teams which travel with projection equipment and other screening paraphenalia bringing films to rural communities in different parts of the korean countryside. they do this by setting up temporary open-air screens and sometimes where possible using the halls of local community buildings as a makeshift theatre. rather like bookmobiles (of the ones i know of the one that i like best is the decommissioned naval ship turned into a floating library travelling by river into rural thailand) this is an extraordinary outreach effort and something that is to me much more important than a youtube channel which presupposes you are middle class and highspeed internet. (i’m not knocking it, though. it’s a great channel organised by filmmaker and by era and are films are all subtitled in english. (the selection, by the way, includes im kwon taek’s sopyeonje, which deserves many many separate posts.)

*kofa is a korean non-profit organisation based in seoul which collects, classifies and preserves films (they are the national depository for films: korea has had mandatory deposit laws since the mid-90s.) they also carry out research and publication through their affiliate, the institute of korean film history, and run a film reference library and museum as well as the gangwon centre for film and media.