Jeonju film fest closes with downsized ceremony
THE Jeonju International Film Festival wrapped up after a 10day run on Saturday without a proper closing ceremony, The Korea Herald reported yesterday.
The decision to downsize the closing ceremony was announced on Thursday night after the event organiser found out that one member of the audience and a festival organizing staffer tested positive for the coronavirus.
Except for those two cases, there has not been any other reports of a further spread of the infection, the festival organizer said.
Instead of the planned closing ceremony, the director of the 22nd Jeonju International Film Festival Lee Joon-dong and co-programmer Moon Seok both gave a brief speech before showing the closing film on Saturday.
The festival’s closing film was animation ‘Josep,’ directed by Aurel. The movie tells a fictional story based on the life of Spanish illustrator Josep Bartoli (19101995).
“There were confirmed patients, but we learned our lessons. We now know how to operate big festivals (amid Covid-19).” Lee said during an online press conference held on Saturday.
Lee added that the Jeonju film fest is willing to share its know-how with other festival organisers.
Under the slogan ‘Film Goes On,’ the 22nd Jeonju International Film Festival introduced 194 movies from 48 countries.
The total number of both online and offline festival audiences reached over 19,590 as of Saturday, official data showed.
Similar to last year, 141 films were made available for online streaming via local streaming platform Wavve this year. The online streaming service was only available for users in Korea.
Also, only 33 per cent of the seats of four theaters in Jeonju were made available to the public this year to abide by the government’s social distancing guidelines.