Pema Tseden’s “Old Dog” (Khyi rgan) opens with a handsome Tibetan youth riding into a town on his motorbike with an aged, shaggy dog tied to a chain. The youth looks virile and has a strong bodily presence on the screen, but we learn later in the film that he is impotent [reminiscent of Joan Chen’s depiction of a Tibetan man during the Cultural Revolution in “Xiuxiu - The Sent Down Girl”]. “Old Dog” is about the emasculation of body and space in the guise of progress and development. The film deals (...)
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Latest addition : 1 November 2011.
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Old Dog (Khyi rgan) directed by Pema Tsetan & The Sun-Beaten Path (Dbus Lam Gyi Nyi Ma) directed by Sonthar Gyal 1 November 2011, by -
The Grasslands - a film by Pema Tsetan
28 July 2010, byOn Saturday I watched a short film: The Grasslands by Pema Tseden. It is Pema Tseden’s student film, and Latse Contemporary Tibetan Library* in the West Village has a copy in their video archives. Pema Tseden — or Wanma Caidan as the pinyin transliteration has it so awkwardly — is a talented Tibetan filmmaker who studied at the Beijing Film Academy and has made two feature films in recent years. I have seen both, The Silent Holy Stones and The Search. They are both amazing and excellent… I (...)
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A Diamond in the Dust
29 April 2010, bySonam Tashi — popularly called Acho Danny — was a young man when he first went out in search of the late Maja Tsewang Gyurme, one of the 20th century’s foremost scholars of Tibetan music and a performer of equal calibre. Maja was surprised that a young Tibetan wanted to find out about a blind musician from an earlier era. He graciously invited Acho (meaning brother in Tibetan) to sit, offered tea and then they talked. This was the beginning of a journey that took Acho Danny 15 years of (...)
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A Pale View of the Himalayas
17 February 2010, bySONGS FROM A DISTANCE BY Bhuchung D. Sonam Published by TibetWrites During a visit to Dharamsala sometime in 2002, I saw a flier of Bhuchung D. Sonam’s book of poems, Dandelions in Tibet, in Gangchen Kyishong, on the bulletin board opposite the staff mess. I was intrigued. For someone who had also begun, rather hesitantly, the research for a novel, any work of imagination by a fellow Tibetan was a source of immense interest. Later, it was Tenzin Tsundue, the activist-poet, who told me (...)
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Struggle, Struggle
17 January 2010, byReview of Free Tibet by Pramod Wadnerkar Published by Step by Step Publisher, New Delhi Pages 399 Tibet has always enchanted travellers, writers, soul seekers, missionaries and adventurers since the ancient times. As a result a large number of books were written about it — ranging from absurd fiction such as The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa (assumed Tibetan name of Cyril Hoskins, a plumber’s son from Plympton in Devon, England) to fantastically well researched political books like China’s (...)
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