A new private grantmaking initiative dedicated to films about North Korea has launched out of Los Angeles, with an advisory board drawn from documentary filmmaking, journalism, and human rights advocacy.
Bearing North, founded by entrepreneurs and film investors Blaine Vess and Esther Paik Vess, will award grants to independent filmmakers worldwide at any stage of production. The initiative covers documentary features, narrative features, and short films, with a stated preference for projects brought forward by North Korean defectors.
The founders bring prior involvement in the space: Blaine Vess has served on the board of Liberty in North Korea for more than a decade, and the couple have previously supported North Korea-related documentaries including “I Am Sun Mu,” “Assassins,” and “Beyond Utopia.”
“Some of the films that have most shaped how we understand history arrived decades after the events they depict,” Blaine Vess said. “We created Bearing North because important stories about North Korea are unfolding now, while the people who lived them, the places where they happened, and the perspectives surrounding them are still within reach.”
The initiative’s advisory group includes Matt Tyrnauer, director of “Valentino: The Last Emperor” and “Where’s My Roy Cohn?”; Anna Fifield, journalist and author of “The Great Successor”; Joseph Kim, North Korean defector and author of “Under the Same Sky”; Hannah Song, CEO of Liberty in North Korea; and Sokeel Park, chief strategy officer of Liberty in North Korea.
Bearing North’s first supported project is “School for Defectors,” directed by Jeremy Workman. The documentary tracks students at the Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea – an institution serving North Korean defectors and their families.
“North Korea is often reduced to headlines about missiles and politics,” Blaine Vess said. “Great filmmakers have the ability to show us something much harder to capture: how ordinary people live, hope, adapt, and endure.”