Art film distributor CAC Entertainment has been active for more than a year and a half. The company was founded by the Busan International Film Festival. The company is expanding its business activities to the barrier-free film industry and the ancillary market beyond importing art films and distributing them in Korea. We asked LEE Chang-hee, an IT businessman-turned-art film market specialist about the future of CAC Entertainment.

 
Last year, your company began to engage in business by distributing The Past, an Asghar FARHADI film. What else did you distribute this year?
 
The Past premiered late December last year and ran until early this year. Grand Central starring Lea Seydoux hit theaters in September, and within this year, we will also release Home, a Maximilian HULT film that premiered in the 18th Busan International Film Festival. This means we distributed three films in 2014. Also, we didn’t distribute Gyeongju but made investments in the film. That’s a total of four films we were involved in for this year. 

 

This year, we conducted four things. First, we developed the platform for barrier-free films (films dubbed or subtitled for the hearing or visually impaired). This technology permits disabled people to watch films on their smartphones after downloading the application. Previously, the disabled people could only go to special places such as the audio-visual media center to watch films. But now, they can go to all multiplex theaters. This year, we tentatively screened 18 barrier-free films during the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) and they were well received. Next year, we will screen all BIFF selections in the barrier-free format and expand the technology to other film festivals such as the Jeonju International Film Festival.  

 

The second is to import and distribute various diversity films. We are carrying out import and distribution business with a focus on films presented at Busan, Cannes and Berlin International Film Festivals. We purchased online rights to 24 films. We will distribute two or three films among them. The third is the IPTV business. We are planning to build a separate BIFF channel as a commemoration to the 20th anniversary of BIFF. The addition of an online channel will allow people to watch films played at the festival whenever they want. Up to now, we have purchased rights to 28 films and will add 30 films during the Berlin International Film Festival. The channel will open probably in the second half of next year. The last part of CAC is production of commercial films. Right now, two screenplays are being penned. One film is in the pre-production stage. This film will start shooting next February and will premiere at the end of next year. The title is confidential (Laughs).  

 

That’s right. If we import 30 art films, we will release only two or three films through theaters and release the remainder in the ancillary market. 
This is because theatrical releases risk huge losses. Therefore, we will selectively release films through theaters. We would draw up a list of films with the help of programmers from the Busan International Film Festivals. Then we would get the feedback from general audiences, and determine if we should purchase the films’ rights. We would purchase with the personality of the ancillary market in mind. We became more cautious as we don’t want audiences to move further away from art films.

 

In this sector, many things come across as new and interesting to me. It is a lot of fun to watch and release films. It inspires me to create a new business model that combines videos and IT. It will be much better if such a business model can make money (Laugh). The hard part is that people in the IT sector and those in the film do not speak the same language. Sometimes, I expand on something from a general perspective but those in the film industry do not understand it. I think I need to train myself to solve such a problem,

 

In importing and distributing art films, the first thing that worries me is the number of viewers. I have deliberated over what films will be commercially popular. We arrived at the conclusion that we should continue to supply art films and diversity films, but can we continue with the deficit was the question we had to think about. I have searched for a method to avoid the deficits. As art films do not draw many spectators through theaters, we have decided to build our own platform in the online sector. This is the IPTV channel I mentioned earlier. We will continue to secure contents and by directly supplying contents to the platform, we will recover the losses. 

 
We are getting close to 2015. Do you have a lineup to be released in theaters for next year?

Right now, nothing is decided yet. We will select new films mostly at the Berlin Film Festival as next year’s theatrical releases. 

 

Needless to say, we will produce, import and distribute films. But in the long term, we would like to create models that combine films and IT. Along with Korean cultural contents such as films and videos, we will go more global via exchanges with overseas platforms. We have selected several business items. We need to discuss them with the Busan Film Commission and the Korean Film Council