Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il (officially transcribed Kim Jong Il; ; ; 16 February 1941 – 17 December 2011) was the second Supreme Leader of North Korea. He ruled from the death of his father Kim Il-sung, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea, in 1994 until his own death in 2011. He was an unelected dictator and was often accused of human rights violations.
On the Art of the Cinema
After graduating from Kim Il-sung University in 1964, Kim Jong-il devoted himself to cultural, ideological and propaganda work at the Department of Organization and Guidance of the Central Committee of the party. Although Kim is known to have been privately interested in Hollywood films, he forbade discussion on foreign film concepts at the Aesthetic Review Meeting, an important annual film conference. After he had ordered the entire conference archive to be destroyed, Kim urged participants to be exclusively concerned with the teachings of Kim Il-sung and the party in creative work. Since then, Kim Jong-il's influence in film and literary administration grew, and he resisted liberal artistic influence from the de-Stalinizing Soviet Union. From 1968, Kim began to work on film adaptations of guerilla plays originating from the 1930s. Kim had personally guided the production of films, such as "Sea of Blood", (parts one and two, 1969), "The Fate of a Self-Defence Corps Man" (, 1970) and "The Flower Girl" (1972). Afterwards, Kim Jong-il began producing revolutionary operas. Kim had worked in the government arts administration for almost ten years by this time. He then wrote a series of essays based on speeches he had given to directors and screenwriters over the preceding five years, and published it as "On the Art of the Cinema" on April 11, 1973. It was his first major work. Through the rest of the 1970s, Kim continued to oversee cultural activities.