Caught In The Net: The Pyongyang’s All Here

As Kim Jong-un continues to furiously sabre-rattle in Pyongyang – we can’t help but feel he was starved of love as a child – guerilla filmmaker Chrystian Cohen has posted the results of his extremely strange trip last year to the Hermit Kingdom.

“North Korea lies somewhere between a 1930s Soviet Union frozen in time and a dark, futuristic vision of society… as imagined back in the ‘70s” reads the strapline to DPRK: Land Of Whispers, a fascinating real life take on Orwell’s 1984.
“The experience of travel there is not easy to convey with words, but it was certainly one of the most bizarre and emotional trips I’ve ever taken,” Cohen reflects. “A lot of information out there on North Korea seems to be biased and unverifiable – it’s been my intention to approach the subject with an open mind and to show it for what it is.”
The regime’s paranoia apart, what really comes across is just how unbelievably crap they are at propaganda. Watch it at etheriumsky.com which is also home to 30 other rock ‘n’ roll-minded travel docs.
The reviews were all positive this week as The National’s Mistaken For Strangers tour doc premiered in New York as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.
The stranger in question is Tom Berninger, Matt’s heavy metal loving and somewhat more rotund brother who directs. Very much a warts ‘n’ all affair, it includes some spectacular sibling bust-ups as well as a tonne of awesome live footage.
“It was a strange movie to make,” Tom, a self-confessed college dropout with no formal film training, tells the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s very confessional and exposing, but we wanted to make a real movie, something much more compelling, something Matt and I would both love to watch.”
The extended trailer can be found on YouTube.
Which just leaves time for quick visits to eatocracy.cnn.com/category/news/celebrity-chefs/anthony-bourdain (Anthony Bourdain talks up his tasty new CNN series); drugscience.org.uk (the real dope on drugs from David Nutt and his team) and riverbendblog.blogspot.ie (post-War on Terror life in Iraq).