|
|
| |
A first: Tibetans make films on
Tibet
By Tsering Namgyal
TAIPEI - At last, Tibetan directors are getting
into the Tibet act.
While many documentaries
have been made about Tibet, usually emphasizing the
exotic and the extraordinary, movie-lovers and
Tibet-lovers are yet to see full-length feature films
about Tibetans in exile and the issues they confront
about homeland loyalty, individualism and reconciling
their personal fulfillment with the Tibet cause. What's
been lacking is drama, intrigue, suspense - but that is
changing.
Tibetan directors made three feature
films last year in what appears to be a budding Tibetan
film movement, though it's still more of a cottage
industry. And of course all the films were made outside
Tibet, which China considers part of its territory - in
northern India and in Bhutan, another Himalayan Buddhist
kingdom.
Most Tibet movie-goers remember
Seven Years in Tibet by Jean-Jacques Annaud and
the critically acclaimed Kundun by Martin
Scorsese. Now, it's the Tibetans' turn.
Two
films, Poison Charm and We Are No Monks,
will be released this year. Travelers and
Magicians about Bhutan has already been released and
well reviewed. The buzz is about Poison Charm,
bankrolled by American actor and Tibet activist Richard
Gere and Bernardo Bertolucci's Britain-based producer,
Jeremy Thomas. Gere also is executive producer.
The widely
anticipated film is the creation of the Indian-Tibetan
filmmaking couple Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, and it
has been in the making for nearly five years. Both Sarin and Sonam attended Delhi
University and later studied filmmaking in
California.
The shooting was
completed in December, editing will be finished in early
summer and Sarin and Sonam plan hope to screen the film
at the Venice Film Festival in October, followed
immediately by the Toronto Film Festival.
Their
previous works include Shadow Circus, a revealing
documentary about the US Central Intelligence Agency's
involvement in Tibet in the 1960s. At that time, alarmed
by Chinese communism, the CIA trained, financed and
supported a Tibetan guerrilla resistance on the
Nepal-Tibet border, but later withdrew its aid, leading
to the collapse of the movement.
A drama
about exiled youth
Poison Charm deals with
issues of exile for Tibetan youth, dislocation, and the
attempts to re-establish their ethnic roots, but the
plot contains intrigue and drama, rare in the Tibetan
film genre.
Shooting went smoothly. "I'm just
really happy and grateful that it all went as smoothly
as it did," Sonam said in an interview. "I am excited
about editing the film and a little nervous about what
lies ahead."
In the movie, Karma, a 30-year-old
Tibetan filmmaker who has grown up in New York City,
goes to McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala in northern India to
rediscover her roots and to escape from a troubled
relationship with her partner, a black American, with
whom she has a four-year-old daughter. She decides to
make a film there, in what is often called Little Lhasa,
about former political prisoners who have escaped from
Tibet. Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh is the seat of the
Dalai Lama's government in exile.
Karma's
assistant is Jigme, a young Tibetan, and together they
meet Dhondup, an ex-monk who has recently escaped from
Tibet. He tells Karma that his real reason for coming to
India is to deliver a charm box - often used as a
protection amulet - to a man named Loga, an
ex-CIA-trained fighter who has been missing for 15
years. Karma and Jigme eventually learn that somewhere
in the mountains above Dharamsala lives a hermit who may
be able to unlock the secret contained in the charm box.
The picture was shot in the Tibetan communities
of Dharamsala and Dehra Dun in Himachal, in New Delhi
and also in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The film brought
together professionals both from within the Tibetan
community and outside. Kathmandu-based Tibetan director
Tsering Rhithar is the associate director and Indian
cinematographer Ranjan Palit is the director of
photography.
In We Are No Monks,
filmmaker Pema Dhondup tells the story of four friends
living in the exiled Tibetans' capital Dharamsala. The
young quartet are torn between trying to do something
good for their homeland and the urgency of finding their
way into the regular world of salaries, careers and, the
most common of all dreams, emigration to America.
Largely shot in McLeod Ganj, the film by
Dhondup, a graduate from the film school at the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles,
portrays both the aspirations and frustrations of
Tibetan young people. Dhondup says he actually shot the
film on a "zero budget" - everything was donated, no one
was paid. Much of the funding came from benefactors such
as Rupin Dang of Wilderness Films, a New Delhi
production company that makes documentaries for the
National Geographic and Discovery channels.
Debating how to pursue the Tibet
cause
While Tibetans of different orientations
and origins are bound together in their concern for the
Tibetan cause, the film underscores the continuing
debate about which methods they should adopt to attain
it.
And the cause itself is debated. The Tibetan
exile government led by the Dalai Lama currently
promotes a middle approach between full independence and
total Chinese control. But a minority of Tibetans strive
for total autonomy and do not believe that China has any
right to control Tibet, and they compare themselves to
pro-independence activists in Taiwan.
In the
film We Are No Monks, for instance, one of the
characters, Passang, a newly arrived Tibetan youth and
former political prisoner, considers taking the
dangerous path of violence in order to draw attention to
the plight of Tibetans and their demands for
independence or real autonomy.
"It is an issue,"
said director Dhondup. "Will Tibetan youth one day be
forced to shun the philosophy of non-violence and take
up more extreme measures?"
The youngest of the
four characters, Tenzin, born in Tibet and educated in
India, defies the wishes of his patriotic civil-servant
father by plotting ways to move to the United States,
which he imagines as a cure-all for his problems.
While all the Tibetan actors in the movie are
amateurs, one well-known Indian actor, Gulshan Grover,
appears as the ubiquitous policeman trying to maintain
order despite the boisterous, nocturnal social life of
dancing and drinking that often characterize the life of
exile and activism. Grover also contributed his talents
at no cost. His suave Bollywood performance adds a bit
of luster.
A film about Bhutanese dreams of
America
Not all Tibetan-made movies are about
Tibet, however. In Travellers and Magicians,
filmmaker Khyentse Norbu tries his cinematic skills on
the life in the beautiful - some say mystical - Kingdom
of Bhutan, a Buddhist Himalayan country.
For its
artistic brilliance and hilarious narrative, Norbu~{!/~}s
first movie, The Cup, won critical international
acclaim. It told of the passion for soccer and fun among
the teenage monks who otherwise led a highly regimented
life.
In Travellers, which has earned
rave reviews in the US and elsewhere in the West, Norbu
takes his already successful movie career a step
further. Shot in pristine Bhutan, the movie tells the
story of a Bhutanese official, Dhondup, who also sees
America as his Shangri-La.
Norbu is not only a
film director, he is also a spiritual leader and is
known by his religious title, Dzongsar Khyentse
Rinpoche, recognized by Tibetan Buddhists as the
reincarnation of one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist
masters of the 20th century. Rinpoche is internationally
well connected and runs a spiritual network called
Siddhartha International. He is also an aspiring
novelist and poet and a fan of Japanese culture,
including Japanese movies.
And between movies,
the Rinpoche, who previously had a role in the
Bertolucci's the Little Buddha, is highly sought
after as a lecturer on Buddhism. Asked about this two
lives as filmmaker and spiritual guide, Rinpoche said he
sees no contradiction in his life between the material
and the sacred. Rather, he said, the two paths
complement each other, since movies can be used as tools
for spiritual practice and "visualization" just as
religious scroll art, Thangkas, are used for spiritual
training.
If the movies can help attain some
purpose of education or enlightenment, then the recent
Tibetan films may be regarded as another dimension of
Tibet's spiritual culture.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
