Marking the second day of the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), Busan Metropolitan City has broken ground for the Busan Post-Production Facility - to be built in the Centum City complex in Haeundae.

The facility will house a film lab and studios for digital intermediate, editing, computer graphics, sound recording and mixing facilities, in addition to other digital post-production facilities.

The $35m facility will be partially financed by the Korean government and Busan City at $13.2m each. The remaining eight billion won is expected to come from the private sector.

Expected to complete construction by 2011, the building will house 8,236 square metres on a site of 6,611 square metres. The first construction is expected to be completed in 2008, fully equipped for film processing and digital post works.

An average of 40 films a year - local and international - shoot in Busan but without any post-production facilities, the city has been seeing this value-added work shift to Seoul.

The city is in a push to transform itself into a hub for Asian filmmaking and sees this new facility as the first step towards that goal.

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