Preview
DREAMING OF TIBET
Featuring Tseten Phanucharas, Tsering Lhamo and Ngawang Ugyen
Directed by Will Parrinello
Thursday, May 13
Max Bell auditorium (Banff Centre)
After a handful of Tibetans fled some nightmarish Chinese repression in their home country by making mid-winter journeys across 19,000-foot Himalayan passes and carving out lives in not-so-welcoming Nepal, documentary filmmaker Will Parrinello says he still had to twist arms to get their tales on camera.
Such stories are glorious film fodder, indubitably, but the Tibetans Parrinello encountered while filming Dreaming of Tibet were too modest and selfless to pour their hearts out for the film without a little prodding.
"They kept saying ‘Don’t you think you should be telling the story of my brother?’ And then you’d go to the brother and he’d say the same thing," Parrinello says. "That was always happening. That’s just their way."
For a filmmaker from a culture built on shit-kicking individualism (yes, he’s American), Parrinello says that attitude was too intriguing to ignore.
That same attitude permeates much of Dreaming of Tibet, which profiles three Tibetan refugees; American-based political activist Tseten Phanucharas, Kathmandu nurse Tsering Lhamo and Himalayan monk Ngawang Ugyen. Although all struggle in disparate circumstances, all fight to preserve their culture and work to free the country from the violent dominance of China.
What resonates most from the film – made even more poignant by the blood-spattered tit-for-tat of modern global conflict – is the exiles’ outlook on their seemingly desperate circumstances.
"It is because of their Buddhism they have this acceptance of what is. ‘This is just a moment in time. Things are bound to change. If there’s blame to be made… maybe you should look at yourself,’" Parrinello says.
"That really appealed to me as a Westerner. I think there’s something to be learned from that, especially in the wake of 9-11. Instead of always retaliating, there’s a more introspective way to do it."
The documentary itself adopts a similar way of telling its story. Parrinello doesn’t delve deeply into the heartbreaking nature of the Chinese occupation or Tibetans’ harrowing trips into exile, but instead focuses on the enduring hope of refugees.
"I had the opportunity to meet Tibetan people in Nepal who were trying so hard to make their lives better… (yet) they all gave so much of themselves to the cause, whatever that cause may be," Parrinello says. "I wanted to find that balance and not just make it a complete story of despair."
It must be difficult to keep despair out of any story on Tibet these days. After 50 years of occupation, China’s cultural and ethnic smothering of Tibet seems to be only getting worse, and Nepal is growing increasingly hostile to Tibetan refugees as the country’s king cozies up to China. But Parrinello says he has little doubt Tibetans will ensure their culture’s survival, thanks to their reverence for Buddhism and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
"This might be a bad analogy, but if someday there’s a Tibetan in a spaceship to Mars, they will bring Tibet with them," Parrinello says. "The people I’ve encountered have shown me they will carry on." |
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