There has been a lot of stories (and here and here) over the past couple of days about North Korean television airing BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 film, which starred Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley), apparently the first Western film to be broadcast on TV there. This has led to much speculation about why–Why now? Why this movie, about a Sikh girl who dreams of playing professional soccer?

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Most speculation has focused on the film’s content (apolitical), with a bit about the current state of life inside North Korea. But these stories miss one important fact–North Koreans already know the movie, as it was shown at the 2004 Pyongyang Film Festival. It was censored then (just as it was on the TV broadcast), and not many people could see it, but it did play there. And I think one of the film’s producers was invited to Pyongyang, too (I recall talking to one of the producers at PiFan the following year).

North Korea can be a difficult, opaque state, but once the powers-that-be there know someone/something and have a personal relationship, they often grow much more comfortable. Witness Dan Gordon, whose documentary about the 1966 North Korean soccer team, THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES, has allowed him to return to North Korea to make other documentaries. Or Johannes Schoenherr’s trips to North Korea. Or the foreign animators who work there.