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| Mayor Park Won-soon |
Under the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) plan, Chungmuro, where the country's first movie theater is situated, will be home to a 5,000-sqaure-meter "Seoul Cinematech."
Inspired by Paris' Cinematheque Francaise and New York's Film Forum, Seoul Cinematech will accommodate film archive and exhibition hall of everything and anything about movies.
The city government will also make a 7,000-sqaure-meter indoor studio, where movie producers can get trained and make films. Some part of the place will be used as exhibition hall for tourists spellbound by the Korean cultural wave, known as "hallyu."
"By utilizing Seoul's abundant human and material resources, I will make the city as the Asia's hub of film production," Mayor Park said.
For the faltering independent film producers in the market, where a few dominant players exert big influence over production and distribution of movies, the SMG will run independent-only movie theaters from the current one to three by 2018. And there will be more (from six to 12) regular public movie screening for them.
Also by 2018, the SMG will support independent film producers from production to distribution by providing money (less than 50 percent of the production cost), equipment and even free showcase.
For the costs, the SMG will give out 20 billion won and raise a charity fund of 30 billion won by 2017. And it plans to use public facilities such as stadiums and Dongdaemun Design Plaza for special showcases.
All these, the SMG believes, would help create a fairer environment where independent film producers can compete with big players with huge resources.
Meanwhile, the SMG said it will be more active in attracting movie producers from overseas by providing resources they need for movie-makings, in cooperation with other public organizations such as the Cultural Heritage Administration and the National Police Agency.
In London, for example, more than 300 private and public organizations systematically support movie-makings to attract film producers from other countries, the SMG said.
While the Korean pop culture wave is sweeping across Asia, the country has yet to establish its status as city of films. With the plans, the SMG wants to challenge Hong Kong and Mumbai for the title.
And the economic effects come with the title will be enormous, experts said.
For example, for allowing the movie, "Avengers: Age of Ultron," to be filmed in Korea only for two weeks, the government predicted the economic effects would be about 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion), including an additional 620,000 foreign tourists, profit creation worth 87.6 billion won, 300 jobs, and 400 billion won worth of direct promotion and enhancement of Korea's nation brand.
In fact, 6 percent of visitors to New Zealand (around 120,000 to 150,000 people) cited the movie, "The Lord of the Rings," as being one of the main reasons for visiting New Zealand in 2004.
SMG also pointed out that, after "Hello Stranger," which was filmed in Seoul, was released in 2010, the number of Thai tourists to Korea shot up by 36.5 percent that year.
