MCLC: Tibetan film 'Old Dog'

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: bruce humes <kxumushi at yahoo.com>
Subject: Tibetan film 'Old Dog'
***********************************************************

Source: http://www.bruce-humes.com/?p=6854

"Old Dog": Pema Tseden's Latest Film Shot in Tibetan to Screen in LA

The first director ever to film a movie entirely in Tibetan on the ground
in China, Pema Tseden (万玛才旦), now has another award-winning flick to his
name: Old Dog. It captured the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Filmex in late
2011, and will premier on the West Coast of the US in Los Angeles on May
11, 2012. The director will be on hand for apost-screening Q & A
<http://www.international.ucla.edu/china/events/showevent.asp?eventid=9474>
.

“Old Dog,” writes Nicola Davidson in Tibet New Wave
<http://dgeneratefilms.com/uncategorized/tibet-new-wave-in-the-south-china-
morning-post/> for the South China Morning Post, “is a story centred on an
aged Tibetan Mastiff. The creature has caused a rift between a father who
dresses in Tibetan Garb and rides a horse to town, and a son, an alcoholic
who rides a motorbike.”

The son sells the mastiff to a dog dealer, but his father retrieves it and
sets it free in the mountains—only to find the dog once again in the hands
of the dog dealer. In the end, the father takes drastic action to liberate
his long-time companion.

Pema Tseden is arguably China’s poster-boy Tibetan filmmaker. The son of
nomads, he went on to graduate from the Beijing Film Academy and shoot
Silent Holy Stones(2005), the first-ever feature film in the Tibetan
language and using an all-Tibetan cast and crew.  He followed this up with
The Search (2009), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Shanghai
International Film Festival.

“I think Tibet has always been mythologized and worshipped, and made more
remote,” says Pema Tseden in a revealing interview (audio and print) with
NPR (Director Seeks to Capture Life in Modern Tibet
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106089201>).
“People’s psychological expectations and experiences of Tibet are stuck in
the past. They don’t understand the new Tibet.”

But he faces considerable obstacles in telling his story about the “new
Tibet.” According to the NPR report, his second film The Search “was
vetted by the State Administration of Film, Radio and Television, as well
as by the Religious Affairs Bureau and the United Front Work Department,
which manages relations with ethnic minority groups in China.”

Nor does he necessarily relish his role as the China-based director who
has brought Tibetan film to the world’s attention.  Silent Holy Stones won
a Golden Rooster, a major Chinese award, in 2005—the year the PRC
celebrated 100 years of film.“Lots of people asked me if I felt it was a
very glorious and proud moment. But I felt very sad that it’s taken 100
years to have a Tibetan film. I’m not proud; I think it’s a matter of
great sorrow,” he told NPR.