The cinema of and about North Korea remains as murky as one would expect of a nation routinely described as a hermit kingdom and an information black hole.

Three new films, however, show in very different ways that it is entirely possible to bypass or subvert official channels when dealing with North Korea. N.C. Heikin’s documentary “Kimjongilia ” draws on refugee testimony . “The Red Chapel,” by the Danish journalist Mads Brugger, is a culture-clash comedy as well as an ambush documentary in the vein of Sacha Baron Cohen . “The Juche Idea,” by the American experimental filmmaker Jim Finn, uses the theories of Kim Jong-il to satirize the process of art making under both socialist and capitalist systems.

The starting point for “Kimjongilia,” named for the flower created for Mr. Kim’s 46th birthday, was Kang Chol-hwan’s memoir “Aquariums of Pyongyang,” one of the first accounts of life in a North Korean gulag. After hearing Mr. Kang speak at a conference, Ms. Heikin optioned his book, intending to make a drama. The project evolved into a documentary about that country’s human-rights abuses ? the summary imprisonments and executions, the needless famine of the mid-’90s ? that Mr. Kang and others have brought to light.

“The idea was to put a human face on it,” Ms. Heikin said. “A bunch of statistics would not have worked.”

Mr. Brugger enlisted two Danish- Korean performers, Jacob Nossell and Simon Jul, to pose as a comedy duo, and applied for permission to visit North Korea on a cultural exchange program. Mr. Brugger and his accomplices were allowed to perform in Pyongyang and document their preparations, as long as their tapes were turned over for screening.

“The Red Chapel,” which won the world-cinema documentary prize at Sundance in January , traffics in what Mr. Brugger calls roleplay journalism.

As he had expected, there were no opportunities for major exposes while in North Korea: the group’s translator doubled as a minder. “There’s no smoking gun, but everything is between the lines,” he said, adding that the film functions as “a study of how an authoritarian regime destroys human emotion and interaction.”

As an independent filmmaker, Mr. Finn said, he was struck by the low-budget resourcefulness of the North Korean movies he found for sale on eBay and by the film theories of Kim Jong-il, which often relate to the national philosophy of “juche,” roughly translated as self-reliance. One of his maxims, for instance, prescribes that films be made quickly, cheaply and with the proper ideology. “It’s already what I was doing, like I had my own quasi-Marxist state in my apartment,” Mr. Finn said. “So I decided to make my own juche film.”

It is safe to assume that none of these films will find a North Korean audience. “Kimjongilia” was warmly received last year at South Korea’s largest film festival, Ms. Heikin said. “The Red Chapel” was shown at a South Korean-run festival adjacent to the demilitarized zone, and Mr. Brugger said the North Korean authorities were aware of the film.

Mr. Finn invited North Korea’s United Nations ambassador to a screening of “The Juche Idea,” but did not hear back. “I’m open to showing the film in North Korea,” Mr. Finn said, “but I might inject a GPS or radio-frequency ID tag into my skin first.”


By DENNIS LIM