film

Using undercover footage and stills, Meltdown in Tibet blows the lid off China’s huge and potentially catastrophic dam-building projects in Tibet. The mighty rivers sourced in Tibet are lifelines to the people of India and Southeast Asia. These rivers are at great risk from rapidly receding glaciers—a meltdown accelerated by climate change—and from large-scale damming and diversion, due to massive Chinese engineering projects.

A Shawl to Die For tracks the ancient craft of shahtoosh weaving in Kashmir, India and discovers its links to the Tibetan antelope or Chiru found on the Chang Tang plateau in the Tibet Autonomous region of China. The documentary discovers and establishes that shahtoosh is in fact, the under-fleece of the Chiru, which is killed to extract this extraordinary fibre. This wool however comes with a historical importance as it has been woven into fabric only in the Kashmir valley in north India.

Call it Karma is the inspiring true story about a young Tibetan Monk named Gyalten Rinpoche who in 1995 was sent on a spiritual pilgrimage by his Master to walk 1,000 miles from his remote mountain village.

Through the Holy City of Lhasa, starving and exhausted, he makes his way across the rooftop of the world to the impoverished Nepalese villages and into the sacred lands of India.

The films of the Tibetan film archive evening courtesy of Tibet Film Archive, New York.

Leaving Fear Behind (in Tibetan: ‘Jigdrel’) is a heroic film shot by Tibetans from inside Tibet, who longed to bring Tibetan voices to the Beijing Olympic Games. With the global spotlight on China as it rises to host the XXIX Olympics, Tibetans wish to tell the world of their plight and their heartfelt grievances against Chinese rule. The footage was smuggled out of Tibet under extraordinary circumstances. The filmmakers were detained soon after sending their tapes out, and remain in detention today.

Fate of the Lhapa is a feature-length documentary about the last three Tibetan shamans living in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal. Each lhapa requested that their story be filmed. Their fear was that the next heir might not appear until after their own deaths. Subsequently, with no lhapa alive to mentor the children, the documentary would be used to transmit the knowledge to the next generation.

The films of the Tibetan film archive evening courtesy of Tibet Film Archive, New York.

The films of the Tibetan film archive evening courtesy of Tibet Film Archive, New York.

In recent years, growing pressures from the outside world have posed unprecedented challenges for Tibetan nomads. Rigid government policies, rangeland degradation, and the allure of modern life have prompted many nomadic families to leave the pastures for permanent settlement in towns and cities. According to nomads, the world has entered duegnan — dark times.

Motivated by previous travels to Tibet, the narrator sets off on a personal quest, focusing on the fast-disappearing Tibetan nomad culture. Why are the nomads being forcibly relocated by Chinese officials? Why are they are being shifted off their traditional grazing lands into concrete ghettos? In these settlement camps, nomads are marginalised and have little chance of making a decent living, or finding a new profession. Previously, when grazing yaks, they were self-sufficient and lived in an entirely sustainable way.