The case of the Busan International Film Festival(Elley 1998, 21). In this respect, the development and growth of the APM were related to a
broader transformation within the film industry in East Asia. This, in turn, was linked to the
growing commercial imperatives of international film culture.
Negotiating a place between Korean and asian cinema
The BIFF’s unique formulation of regionalization is also evident in its programming. The
particular regional identity promoted by programs like “New Currents” and “A Window
on Asian Cinema” has been strategically developed to promote Asian identity in a way that
ensures a global reach. Featuring around 12 films, “New Currents” seeks to discover talented
Asian directors and awards a prize of USD30,000 to a director of a first or second feature film.
“A Window on Asian Cinema” dedicated as a non-competitive section, serves as a showcase
for new and representative films by talented Asian filmmakers.^14 According to the Inter-
national Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF),^15 once festivals are classified as
competitive, they are not supposed to accept or exhibit films which have previously been in
competition elsewhere. A consequence of this regulation is that smaller or newly established
festivals, like Edinburgh and Rotterdam, tend to use a less strict selection criterion and are
categorized as non-competitive, so they are not limited to the number of films they can
screen. As a new festival, in a non-Western region, the BIFF had to consciously position
itself as non-competitive to survive in the competitive global festival world. “A Window on
Asian Cinema” aims to be a portal to East Asian cinema by selecting films that represent the
entire region. The BIFF’s classification of Asian cinema seems to closely model the Asian
programs of the IFFR. As Thomas Elsaesser observes, while the IFFR has pursued a platform
of Asian cinema outside Asia and has played a role in “building bridges between Asian cinema
and European audiences,” the BIFF’s goal has been to act as a platform for Asian cinema within
Asia (Elsaesser 2005, 85).
Indeed, the festival has emphasized the breadth of its scope, showcasing films from across
Asia. When the BIFF was launched, it distinguished itself from its counterparts in Japan and
Hong Kong by focusing on Northeast Asian cinema from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong
(Kim 1996, 10). These regional boundaries have, however, rapidly expanded. The festival has
started to regularly showcase Asian films, including films from central and south Asia, in the
“Special Program in Focus” section. The program featured films from Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan,
Tajikistan, and Syria.
This expansionist tendency or “an anxiety about scale” (Harbord 2002, 64) in programming
can be understood as one of the crucial components of the survival strategies used to differen-
tiate a festival from other rivals in the same region (Stringer 2001). Consequently, BIFF expan-
sionism, as a regionalization strategy, utilizes a wide range of tactics centered on programming.
The tenth BIFF was the moment that the festival’s development took a decisive turn by rein-
forcing its regional identity within a local, regional, and global context. A promotional crusade
that involved a massive 31 screens, 307 films (including 122 Asian films from 73 countries), the
launch of the Asian Film Academy and the announcement of the launch of the new Asian Film
Market accompanied that year’s festival.^16 By aggressively programming a considerable number
of Asian films, the festival claimed its position as a critical hub in Asia, upstaging the established
Hong Kong and Tokyo festivals to become the primary point of contact with “the other new
Asian cinemas” (Elsaesser 2005, 85).
While the festival sought to serve as a showcase for Asian cinema by strongly evoking an
Asian identity, the festival equally strove to promote the national film industry by acting as a
gateway to the global film market for the Korean films exhibited. In fact, many Korean films