Global Courant 2023-05-13 20:37:29
Pema Tseden, a filmmaker and author who, despite intense scrutiny by Chinese censors, gave an honest look at contemporary Tibetan life, died in Tibet on Monday. He was 53.
His death was announced in a statement issued by the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he was a professor. The statement did not specify a cause or say where he died.
Tibet and its people have often been misrepresented with clichés. To the West, it was a utopia, a fantasy based on the depiction of Shangri-La in British author James Hilton’s 1933 novel “Lost Horizon.” To the Communist Party of China, Tibetans were serfs or barbarians in need of rescue and rehabilitation. , featuring propaganda films portraying Han cadres as liberators.
Pema Tseden (pronounced WA-ma TSAY-ten in his native language), who like most Tibetans did not have a surname and used his two first names instead, said that as a child he had longed for accurate representations of his home, people and culture which existing Hollywood and Chinese films did not offer.
“Whether it was the clothes, the habits, the manners, every element, even the smallest, was imprecise,” he said in a 2019 interview. “That’s why at the time I thought that if someone later made films with even a little knowledge of the language of my people, the culture, the traditions of my people, it would be very different.”
In his films, Pema Tseden rarely depicted the Chinese population of Tibet, which increased after the Red Army took Tibet in 1951. To avoid Chinese censorship, he eschewed references to the Dalai Lama, who was seen in China as a supporter of Tibetan independence. This allowed him to avoid overt political criticism while still addressing broader themes such as the loss of traditions and identity in the face of modernization.
He was the first Tibetan filmmaker working in China to shoot a film entirely in the Tibetan language. He was also the first Tibetan director to graduate from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, which cultivated the country’s leading directors. But like all artists in China who research ethnic minorities and religion, he was subject to additional scrutiny by state censors and required to submit scripts in Chinese for review.
“His challenge, of course, was to make films that reflect a Tibetan sense of identity and a Tibetan cultural sensibility, without upsetting the Chinese authorities.” Tenzing Sonam, a Tibetan filmmaker and writer living in Dharamshala, India, said over the phone. “Pema Tseden navigated that fine line incredibly well.”
In ‘The Silent Holy Stones’ (2005) he depicted everyday Tibetan experiences: monks preoccupied with television, villagers rehearsing for a New Year’s opera performance. And in “Old Dog” (2011), images of barbed wire fences spanning the Tibetan grasslands explored the power of the state and the complexities of privatizing ancestral land.
His films were “not just about Tibet,” Tsering Shakya, a Tibetan historian and scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said in an interview. “This is about China and people left behind by China’s economic miracle.”
As Pema Tseden’s influence grew, the Chinese film industry and its audiences began to accept Tibetan as a language used on the big screen. And by combining Tibetan traditions of oral storytelling and song with modern film formats, his films spawned an entirely new genre that some have dubbed the Tibetan New Wave.
“The stories contained in his films – always meticulously framed and exquisitely modulated – speak powerful truths in the softest voices,” said Shelly Kraicer, a Chinese film curator and researcher who wrote subtitles for some of Pema Tseden’s work. “He’s an important filmmaker in the world.”
He sought to mentor a new generation of Tibetan filmmakers, including Sonthar Gyal, Dukar Tserang, Lhapal Gyal and Pema Tseden’s son Jigme Trinley, who went on to direct their own films. Drivers, assistants and other crew members sometimes juggled more than one role, performing as extras and coaching actors in regional dialects.
“He created an embryonic Tibetan film circle, the film industry, from scratch,” Françoise Robin, a professor of Tibetan language and literature at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris, who had known Pema Tseden for more than two decades, said by phone. . “He is very faithful in friendship. Some people worked with him for 10 years.”
Pema Tseden was born on December 3, 1969 in Qinghai Province, part of a northeastern region of Tibet traditionally known as Amdo. His parents were farmers and herders.
From an early age, he immersed himself in classical texts and spent hours handwriting Buddhist scriptures after school. He worked as a teacher for four years before studying Tibetan literature and translation at Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou. He then worked for several years as a civil servant in his home province.
Beginning in 1991, he published short stories in Tibet, in both Tibetan and Chinese, about individuals facing profound changes. They underlined the importance of forging a bond with nature and animals, and showed “the complexity of life in its simplest language,” said Jessica Yeung, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University who had known Pema Tseden for a decade and translated his work. He later adapted some of his stories into films.
After attending the Beijing Film Academy in the early 2000s, he released “The Silent Holy Stones” which received critical acclaim, as well as several other films. Ten years later, ‘Tharlo’ (2015), about the journey of a shepherd who has to travel outside his remote village to register for an official ID, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It won many awards, including a Golden Horse Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in Taiwan. Among Tibetans, it also became a groundbreaking work for aspiring filmmakers within a few years.
“A Tibetan movie should show Tibetan life,” Pema Tseden said in an undated interview recently released by Kangba TV, a Tibetan-language broadcaster. “In my case, from my first film, I wanted my films to have absolutely Tibetan characters, all of whom would speak Tibetan and whose behavior and way of thinking were Tibetan. This is what makes Tibetan films different.”
Pema Tseden’s subsequent films benefited from his higher profile. “Jinpa” (2018), about a truck driver who hits a sheep and then picks up a hitchhiker, was produced by Jet Tone Films from Hong Kong author Wong Kar-wai and premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Orizzonti Award won. Award for Best Screenplay. “Balloon” (2019), about a family dealing with an unexpected pregnancy amid China’s family planning laws, also premiered in Venice. An upcoming movie, “Snow Leopard,” about the tense relationship between humans and predatory animals, is currently in post-production. At his death he was working on another film.
Information on survivors besides his son was not immediately available.
Li You contributed to research.
