We are only one week away from celebrating the 27th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF). Numerous movie directors, actors, actresses and movie fans will visit Busan during this time, making the city extra crowded. So, let me take you back to 1996 when the first Busan International Film Festival took place.

1. The first film festival was held on Friday, September 13, 1996, at the Suyeong Bay Yachting Center. To kick off the event, well known Korean actors and actresses including Shin Seongil, Kang Suyeon and Shim Eunha walked the red carpet while the Busan New Philharmonic Orchestra played “Return to Busan Port.” Since then, the festival has been held in October.

2. The festival’s opening night film was a 1996 British drama called Secret and Lies. This popular film, directed by Mike Leigh, starred Marianne Jean Baptiste and Brenda Blethyn. Blethyn was one of the few non-Korean movie stars who attended the first Busan international Film Festival.

3. Even though the film festival only showed 169 films from 30 countries, Busan was flooded with over 180,000 movie fans. People gravitated to the festival because it was not easy to watch foreign films in languages other than English at that time.

4. In the 1990s, restaurants and bars were not allowed to stay open past midnight in Busan. Most of the movie theaters in Busan were in Nampo-dong, which meant that people would often sit on newspapers and drink after a late film instead of getting to eat in a restaurant.

5. The Busan International Film Festival (aka BIFF) used to be called PIFF. Not until 2011 did movie organizers and city officials finally decided to change it to BIFF.