Published by: World Tibet Network News Sunday, November 23, 1997

Xinhua is the official news agency of the People's Republic of China

Text of report by Xinhua news agency

Beijing, 21st November: The recently released American movie "Seven Years in Tibet" is a poorly-made movie with a fabricated historical background that seriously vilifies the Oriental people, according to a movie review in the `Hong Kong Economic Journal's' 12th November issue.

It said that China has been forced to boycott this year's Tokyo International Film Festival because the Japanese organizers insisted on showing this Hollywood movie at the closing ceremony and that this can be said to be some kind of "political conflict" and "diplomatic incident" .

The reviewer based this mainly on an interview with Tobari Higashiyu, a noted movie critic in Japan who watched "Seven Years in Tibet" on 29th October.

"The deepest impression I got from this movie is that both the characters and background of the story are untrue, and that the movie is a vilification of the Oriental peoples by the Americans," Tobari was quoted as saying.

From an artistic perspective, he said, "Seven Years in Tibet" is by no means good and doesn't deserve such a warm reception from the film festival organizers.

"As I know, this movie wasn't shot in Tibet, but on a snow mountain somewhere in South America, and the Potala Palace in it was just a model," he said, adding that all major actors, except one Japanese-American, are Americans.

"Though I'm not an expert on Tibet, I can see easily that the `Tibet' in this movie is not the real Tibet," Tobari said, adding that the movie has depicted the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) as a barbaric army, and that an arrogant and disgusting "PLA officer" in the movie even bears a physical resemblance to Chairman Mao Zedong.

"I don't think that the Chinese people would be pleased to see this," he said.

In Tobari's opinion, "Seven Years in Tibet" intended to tell a story about the friendship between the Dalai Lama, then an innocent and inquisitive young man eager to be better informed about the outside world, and an arrogant and heartless Austrian mountaineer regaining his loving and compassionate nature by communicating with the Dalai Lama.

"It's a pity that the movie failed to develop this major theme. On the contrary, it got involved in political warfare and tried to divert the theme to `the PLA's suppression in Tibet'," said Tobari.

He told the `Hong Kong Economic Journal' that he believes the film festival organizers should have tried to get a better understanding of Tibet's situation before deciding to accept a movie like "Seven Years in Tibet" .

In a note at the end, the editor pointed out that shortly after the completion of the movie, the author of the book on which the movie was loosely based, was discovered to be a former Nazi.