Dima Mironenko - "Clowns, Illusionists, and Jugglers: North Korean Circus in Film and Everyday Life"

Dima Mironenko, CEAS Postdoctoral Associate in East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University

In 1966, Pyongyang releases its first color light comedy film, Merry Ring, ushering a new era of politically correct cinema in North Korea. An adaptation of Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 silent classic, The Circus, this inaugural 1960s production marks an historic shift in the way Pyongyang now approaches political education of its citizens. Centered largely on the emulation of Hollywood-style technical finesse and showmanship, Merry Ring and its timing coincide with a new interest in the Western circus among North Korea’s cultural architects and public at large. The talk revisits this critical turning point in North Korean cultural history, examining the implications of the new privileged place for the circus in cinema and everyday life within an emerging new politics of socialist spectacle.