By Lance Olson, February 23, 2007

The cinema screens are dark, the jet-set talent has flown away and this year’s 57th Berlin Film Festival has come to a close. Two weeks of expectation, exhilaration and validation for movie entrants finished with the exciting announcement of Tu Ya De Hun Shi (Tuya’s Marriage) as the Golden Bear winner, the coveted best movie prize of Berlinale.

I’m now back in Los Angeles and I’m still fighting the remnants of the cold I picked up en route to the Berlinale. As such, I’ve had some time to rest and reflect on last week’s whirlwind activities and on the film festival itself.

First off, why is the Berlinale important anyway? Can’t the world just be happy with what the big guns in Hollywood and Bollywood serve up each year? Each question answers the other just by being asked. Berlinale is important in that it gives the public exposure to a diverse slate of films, many of which are not churned out by multinational, corporately-owned studios. If all the world could ever see on the cinema screen were blockbuster franchise films ad nauseum, our view of the world would be very narrow.

Many of the Berlin Film Festival’s movies are followed by “question and answer” sessions (Q&A’s), usually with the director and screenwriter—and sometimes a principal actor. This allows the audience members to ask questions about the movie they've just viewed. A few movies I saw that seemed remote and difficult at first were made much more intriguing once plot points, character motivations and visual metaphors were explained via the Q&A. One such film aided by this one-on-one, Crossing the Line, didn’t win any awards at Berlinale. A fascinating movie on its own, it was made a much more personal experience via the direct interaction between the audience and the creators.

(ED note: However, films that require explanation after viewing in order to understand do not ultimately succeed in their mission. The old adage "show don't tell" comes to mind).

Crossing the Line is a documentary about the last American defector remaining in North Korea, Private First Class James Joseph “Joe” Dresnok. The film posed the question: What causes a person to stop running, when he has been running away all his life?

Often called America’s Forgotten War, the Korean War began in 1950 when communist forces from North Korea invaded South Korea. The war was fought to a stalemate and, in 1953, the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was formed along the 38th Parallel. No peace treaty was signed and tensions remain high. The war technically continues to this day. After the establishment of the DMZ, both North and South Koreas—with Chinese and UN/US backing—manned each side with its own troops. PFC James “Joe” Dresnok was one of those soldiers and, on August 15, 1967, he walked across the mined DMZ and defected to North Korea.

James “Joe” Dresnok grew up as an orphan, not wanted by his natural family nor encouraged by his foster family. Rebelling against too many strict rules, Dresnok (a juvenile delinquent as a teen) ran away, enlisted in the army on his seventeenth birthday, then married. In May, 1962 he was stationed at the DMZ. Two years later, after his American wife left him and, being fed up with the military’s even stricter discipline (he was facing a POSSIBLE court martial for being AWOL), Dresnok walked across the mined DMZ and defected to North Korea.

Over the next few years there were four total American deserters who crossed the line into North Korea, and they were all lauded by the North Korean government. They were fed every day, even though an estimated hundreds of thousands of their newfound countrymen died in a nationwide famine quaintly called the “Arduous March”. The four became national movie stars as even though the North Koreans never truly accepted them as new citizens. All four stated they enjoyed North Korea, despite their attempt to gain asylum at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang. They were refused. Such mercurial characters were allowed to fully reveal themselves because of the neutrality of the British filmmakers Daniel Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, and by the trust placed in them by the North Korean government.

Dresnok is the last of the four defectors still living in North Korea. All four men married and had children. Their children, who appear more Euro-American than North Korean, consider themselves as full Korean. They seemed unwilling to consider visiting America, and Dresnok himself said he would never leave. He counted himself lucky to be in North Korea with his family, and said that no amount of money in the world would persuade him to leave. His health failing due to a lifetime of smoking and drinking, his teeth framed or replaced by gold dental fillings, his doughy face splotched with spider viens—James “Joe” Dresnok seems to have stopped running and embraces the fate of his final days with his family in their small, spare apartment in North Korea.

Crossing the Line resonates today, as thousands of American soldiers are deployed to Iraq. Some recruits have refused to serve and are court-martialed for their decisions. They are paraded in the media for awhile then disappear into whispers and legend, as did Dresnok and his three expatriate defectors. They may not be blockbuster heroes and villains but, due to film festivals like the Berlinale, the world will have a better chance to see and hear their very human stories.

The Berlin Film Festival started in 1951, six years after World War II and has been opening the world’s eyes to many films that may not otherwise be seen. Even after the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961—splitting the city in two for almost thirty years (just like today’s DMZ in Korea and the nation/island of Cyprus)—the Berlinale persevered, and has only grown stronger since 1989, when the wall fell and Berlin and Germany united again in city, country and people.

Today the city has become one of the most influential European centers of art, culture and politics. While at one of the Berlinale’s festivities I met the current Governing Mayor of Berlin, Mr. Klaus Wowereit. He was delighted that I was there, and mentioned that Berlin and Los Angeles have been official “Sister Cities” since 1967. I thanked him for one of the world's finest film festivals.

Chance meetings and personal insights into movies like the above Crossing the Line occur because of film festivals like the Berlinale. As the Oscar competition at this Sunday’s Academy Awards showcases the glitter and glamor of many costlier movies, it is a palette-cleansing comfort to have cinematic outlets that support smaller budget artistic endeavors, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Lance J. Olson is a contributing writer to the Hollywood Stock Exchange. He can be contacted at lanceoutwest@yahoo.com