The Marmot’s Hole

The Chinese Embassy in Seoul sent an official letter to educational programming broadcaster EBS asking the station to cancel the documentary “The Forbidden Team” at the station’s first ever EBS International Documentary Festival (which runs until Sept. 5 at the COEX). The film, directed by Danish directors Rasmus Dinesen and Arnold Krojgaard, tells the story of a June 2001 football match between a team of Tibetan exiles and a team of Greenlanders that was successfully held despite the best efforts of the PRC and FIFA. Apparently, a Chinese director on the festival’s panel of judges informed the Chinese Embassy of the film after he sat through an advanced screening and saw one too many Tibetan flags and a little too much talk of Tibetan independence. The embassy then sent off an official letter, in the name of the embassy press attache, to EBS telling them not to run the film, which was scheduled for a 6:30 p.m. Thursday screening. EBS called the request “inappropriate” and ran the film as scheduled. The Chinese director who had tipped off the embassy and another Chinese director/judge announced they would end their participation in the festival and return to China, claiming that further participation would be “meaningless.” EBS said their departure would not cause any major problems for the festival.