otto
08 Mar 2003, 06:41 AM
So I hear the surviving players got to visit Middlesbrough last fall and got a huge welcome...
The Game of Their Lives
http://www.naatanet.org/cgi/2003/festival.cgi?op=programFeature&id=1046&tmpl=ProgramFeature.tmpl
Last summer, the South Korean soccer team advanced to the World Cup semi-finals - the farthest ever for an Asian team - triggering a tsunami of support. But South Korea wasn't the first Korean team to find success on the World Cup stage, as this entertaining documentary reveals. In the summer of 1966, the North Korean squad arrived in England for World Cup VIII. Considered 1000-to-1 buzzkills, the lightly regarded Koreans, averaging 55" in height, played tough and fast football and shocked the world by first tying Chile 1-1, then defeating Italy 1-0, a game considered the greatest upset in World Cup history. What happened to the team afterwards has been a thirty-seven-year mystery, until now. THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES tells the story of these plucky 1966 darlings, catching up with seven surviving members of the squad that defeated Italy. Four years of negotiations paid off as the Pyongyang government allowed the film crew unprecedented access to the players and public areas. Interviews with the men and the English townspeople who met them in 1966 are interspersed with amazing archival footage from the actual games and training sessions. An affectionate look at a forgotten moment in sports - and world - history, THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES serves as a tribute to a courageous team while revealing soccer's ability to tear down barriers of race and politics.
Radio interview w/ Nick Bonner on All Things Considered , June 22, 2002
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1145463
Radio interview with filmmakers Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner on Fresh Air, March 5, 2003
http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?displayValue=day&todayDate=03/05/2003
The Game of Their Lives
http://www.naatanet.org/cgi/2003/festival.cgi?op=programFeature&id=1046&tmpl=ProgramFeature.tmpl
Last summer, the South Korean soccer team advanced to the World Cup semi-finals - the farthest ever for an Asian team - triggering a tsunami of support. But South Korea wasn't the first Korean team to find success on the World Cup stage, as this entertaining documentary reveals. In the summer of 1966, the North Korean squad arrived in England for World Cup VIII. Considered 1000-to-1 buzzkills, the lightly regarded Koreans, averaging 55" in height, played tough and fast football and shocked the world by first tying Chile 1-1, then defeating Italy 1-0, a game considered the greatest upset in World Cup history. What happened to the team afterwards has been a thirty-seven-year mystery, until now. THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES tells the story of these plucky 1966 darlings, catching up with seven surviving members of the squad that defeated Italy. Four years of negotiations paid off as the Pyongyang government allowed the film crew unprecedented access to the players and public areas. Interviews with the men and the English townspeople who met them in 1966 are interspersed with amazing archival footage from the actual games and training sessions. An affectionate look at a forgotten moment in sports - and world - history, THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES serves as a tribute to a courageous team while revealing soccer's ability to tear down barriers of race and politics.
Radio interview w/ Nick Bonner on All Things Considered , June 22, 2002
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1145463
Radio interview with filmmakers Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner on Fresh Air, March 5, 2003
http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?displayValue=day&todayDate=03/05/2003