A new film grant with an aim toward supporting defectors of the brutal North Korean regime has launched in Los Angeles.
\n\nFounded by entrepreneurs and film investors Blaine Vess and Esther Paik Vess, the Bearing North film grant will award “independent filmmakers worldwide at any stage of production,” per Variety.
\n\nThe initiative covers documentary features, narrative features, and short films, with a stated preference for projects brought forward by North Korean defectors.
\n\nThe founders bring prior involvement in the space: Blaine Vess has served on the board of Liberty in North Korea for more than a decade, and the couple have previously supported North Korea-related documentaries including “I Am Sun Mu,” “Assassins,” and “Beyond Utopia.”
\n\n“Some of the films that have most shaped how we understand history arrived decades after the events they depict,” Blaine Vess said. “We created Bearing North because important stories about North Korea are unfolding now, while the people who lived them, the places where they happened, and the perspectives surrounding them are still within reach.”
\n\nThe group’s first grant was awarded to School for Defectors from filmmaker Jeremy Workman, which reportedly “tracks students at the Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea – an institution serving…
Original source: https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/
