SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE, France — President Lee Jae-myung, on a state visit to France, met with Korean filmmakers on the 7th and pledged to create a national fund to invest in independent film and the fine arts. He also voiced strong interest in adopting France's SOFICA scheme, which offers large tax breaks to private capital invested in film, saying he would "check on it as soon as I get back."
Lee held a session titled "A Conversation With Korean Filmmakers" at the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France, on the sidelines of the Lumiere Summit, an international conference on the film and video industry. Directors Lee Chang-dong and Chung Joo-ri and actors Sul Kyung-gu, Jeon Do-yeon and Kim Do-yeon attended. When the director proposed benchmarking the SOFICA policy, the president replied that he would "tell the Ministry of Finance and Economy and other relevant ministries to check on it right away," adding, "I will let you know the outcome later."
The director said the scheme was "a policy France has run for 40 years," adding that "through it, France maintains a solid ecosystem in which some 90 diverse films are made each year." SOFICA grants tax benefits to companies and individuals who invest in film, steering that money toward mid- and low-budget films, independent productions and works by first-time directors.
Before the director's proposal, the president had already promised to create a fund to help the film industry compete internationally. He called filmmaking "an area with a very high return on investment." At the same time, he said that "independent film and the pure arts have been left far behind, and many people working in them are struggling to make a living," stressing that "from now on, we will carry out policies you can feel, beyond anything you have imagined."
"In independent art and pure culture, we need to find the material, nurture writers and support production and distribution," he said. "The government has to take this on in earnest — creating funds so we can compete internationally, investing alongside others and attracting investment." He likened the current state of the film and cultural industries to a forest where "the grass and small trees below have all died and only a few old trees are left," saying that "constant regeneration requires a solid ecosystem."
The president said actor George Clooney had expressed astonishment at the growth of Korea's film industry at a private dinner with creators from five continents the previous day. "Among countries liberated from colonial rule, few have grown in less than a century to command global attention while also developing the free political environment and democracy that form the foundation of culture and the arts," he said, urging the audience to "pay even closer attention to Korea from here on."
After the event, the president took selfies with actors Jeon Do-yeon and Kim Do-yeon on his own mobile phone. "Indulge me for a moment. My wife insisted I bring back a photo," he said as he took the pictures, before adding, "Thank you."
