Film Review From Staffordshire KFA UK

 

I was able to watch the classic DPRK feature film "The Flower Girl" on DVD, which had English subtitles. This film was produced in 1972 and it is based on a play authored by Kim IL Sung during the revolutionary struggle of the 1930s. "The Flower Girl" is set in the time when Korea was a colony of the Japanese Empire, and explores the issues of class, nationality and gender. With her little sister Sun Hui, who was blinded by the wife of the Landlord, Kkotpun, the heroine of the film, goes out on the streets of the local town to sell flowers so as to get enough for medicine for her sick mother. The mother of Kkptpun toils relentlessly for the landlord and his wife, earning very little for long hours of labour. The film vividly depicts the misery of the years when the Korean people were under the yoke of Japanese colonialism and the feudal lords. Even away from the immediate setting of "The Flower Girl", of colonized Korea in the 1930s, that the messages of the film was how poverty and exploitation is a degrading reality for a vast number of people (even here in Britain, the increased use of foodbanks) in the world and the way to overcome oppression is to educate and organise, and overthrow the system. Towards the end of the film the peasants organise themselves to fight the landlords inspired by the example of Kkptpun's brother Chol Ryong, who has returned from fighting with the Korean Revolutionary Army. "The Flower Girl" was awarded by the highest prize at the 1972 Karlovy Vary International Film, Czechoslovakia