Tibetan Film Festival 2006
Tibetan Film Festival ends on a festive note
By Tsering Namgyal Khortsa
MCLEOD GANJ, India, 10 May 2006 — The week-long Tibetan film festival in Dharamsala concluded on a festive note on Sunday, marking an important step in the making of the exiled Tibet's budding film industry.
Following the success of the event, organizers decided to hold the festival on an annual basis from this year.
"I am totally satisfied that it all went as planned. I want to announce that it will be an annual event from this year," said Lobsang Wangyal, the chief organizer of the event. The festival hitherto had been a biannual event.
The festival showed a diverse range of movies such as Travellers and Magicians to Dreaming Lhasa and documentaries We Homes Chaps and Angry Monk, amongst others. Movies were shown to a sold-out audience every evening during the festival. Screenings went smoothly as the power supply remained stable during the event.
Dreaming Lhasa highlighted the themes of loss and culture clash when an American-bred Tibetan filmmaker comes to Dharamsala to find her roots, while Travellers and Magicians tackled the life in the kingdom of Bhutan. In We Homes Chaps, Kathmandu-based filmmaker Kesang Tsetan takes stock of life in a boarding school in Kalimpong as Luc Shaedler brings to life the legendary traveller and writer Gendun Chophel in Angry Monk.
For a week, foreign tourists, Dharma students to Tibetan residents of Dharamsala arrived at the Community Hall in McLeod Ganj to celebrate the art of good filmmaking. While not all movies screened were related to Tibet or made by Tibetans, almost all of them touched upon the familiar themes of exile, activism and compassion.
Viewers were thrilled. Many of the movies had not been publicly screened in Dharamshala before. "Some of the translation could have been better. But they are otherwise very good," said Satine, a retired teacher from the US who attended the festival.
The movie gala kicked off with the screening of Travellers and Magicians by the inscrutable Buddhist teacher-cum-filmmaker Khyentse Norbu and We Homes Chaps by Kathmandu-based Kesang Tsetan.
"The festival is a very good effort," said Tenzin Choying, president of the Students for Free Tibet, India. "These platforms provide fresh perspective on many important issues. It inspires creativity."
Organizers said that they may consider renaming the festival to make it more inclusive. This will attract a more diverse array of excellent films and documentaries which may not be directly related to the Himalayan homeland, but may speak for the Tibetan values in other ways. One of the names under consideration is the Dharamsala Film Festival.
Other notable movies were Deepa Mehta's highly-acclaimed Water which novelist Salman Rushdie has called "unforgettably touching", and Zhang Yi-mou's House of Flying Daggers. Among the documentaries were Milk & Opium by Joel Palombo, Refuge by John Halpern, The Yogi who Built Iron Bridges by Tsering Rhithar Sherpa and a musical, Angelo Love the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, by Fabrice Drouet.
While previous movies on Tibet have largely been Hollywood affairs (such as Seven Years in Tibet by Jean Jacques Annaud, and Martin Scorcese's Kundun), many young Tibetan filmmakers have pursued budget movies over the past few years. Some have gone on to achieve international acclaim, creating something of a Tibetan cottage film industry. Organizers estimate that nearly 20 movies and documentaries have been made by Tibetans in the past few years alone, and many more are currently in the works.