Even if you like Mads Brügger’s documentaries, chances are you hate him. The characters he plays in his “non-fiction films”—a Communist theater director in The Red Chapel and, more recently, a corrupt diamond smuggler in The Ambassador—are manipulative and brash, pushing his subjects into greater levels of absurdity and maybe even hurting people. But are […]
ArtAsiaPacific has a feature essay on North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio, which operates under the ‘special guidance’ of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-Il, and produces propaganda art–paintings, public sculptures–for the North Korean state. The studio also has international clients and a ready market in China, South Korea and Japan. But the most startling growth for […]
