The 7th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival was held for 10 days from 10 July, 2003 to 19 was an event that brought out another remarkable growth, following the success of the 6th PiFan, in terms of the program size and diversity, responses of audiences, building up the festival atmosphere through various events and the enhancement of Bucheon City as central of culture that supported international events.
2003PiFan with the opening of the event with <Wonderful Days> showed a total of 187 work products from <Wonderful Days> showed a total of 187 work products from 35 countries and the movie theater was expanded for 3 more sites to provide broader range of selection for audiences. As a result, the event had a total of 65 times of full capacity audiences including the opening and 6 midnight movies, which is 1.5% increased from the previous years and a total of 77,370 audiences (including the outdoor showing) for 10 days in this PiFan.
The special exhibitions also had the diversity with "Attraction and Passion of Bollywood" and "Peak Time of Hong Kong Movies: Shaw Brothers Reminiscing Exhibition" getting the great responses from broad range of audiences beyond the generation differences, and "Guy Madin Special Exhibition had the most unique cine-artists of the said time to gain the feverish attention. In addition, the family section had significantly extended works with the attempt of new method to read the lyrics for under class children, children and family audiences were brought into the arena of movie festival. 'Industry Showing' was newly established to prepare the place of introducing the newest Korean movie to the overseas movie officials and the press, and it provided the opportunity for foreign movies to seek the Korean distributors through PiFan that resulted in contract for < Battlefield Baseball > with a Korean movie distributor. The support for mega-talk was high too. In particular, in the first mega talk, "Memories of Shaw Brothers Movies to Make Out Heart Pumping" with over 100 Shaw Brothers fans participated to bring heated passion in the event. The heated discussion made in four times of mega talk including, "Glory Days of Hong Kong Cinema, Shaw Brothers Retrospective," "Meenakashi Shedde Gives a Ride to Bollywood Wonderland" and "The Art of Killing in Horror Movie" was planned to publish in book named "Mega Talk 2003". In "Flash Talk "had the intimate time of the director Godfrey Reggio of <Qatsi Trilogy>, the director Sam Leong of <Stewardess>, actor Sam Lee, the director Vincenzo Natali of <Cypher >, the closing movie. Many guests of long and short films including Pei-pei Cheng, the main actor in <Come Drink with Me> had the stage welcome and participated in the talk with audience that were touched by heated questions of full audience.
Particularly, the interests and participation of the overseas press media were conspicuously increased this year. Variety, Screen International, Hollywood Reporter and other overseas movie magazines and Kumite, Midnight Idotcom and other media with high interest in Asian movies, 'Kinema Junbo' and other movie magazines in the Asian region gave great critics that, "PiFan has found the niche for greatest fantastic film festival in Asia through the surprisingly diverse programs, passion and energy of audience and volunteers, heated response of citizens. "The response of audience was great on the outstanding design of the homepage of PiFan, and there was a high level of voluntary participation of audiences on various bulletin board and movie review column. However, compared to the extended showing times and theaters, the staffs at the Office of General Affairs remained the same that they were not enough to handle the prevention of inconvenience of audiences or checking in detail of other matters that it causes the audiences' complaints for ticketing on the first day of ticketing.
The theaters still have the obsolete condition and the weak point with the far distance of moving between the theaters could not be overcome by the shuttle bus operation. There is a need of full investment and improvement on the basic facilities of the Film Festival.