Tibetan Film maker Pema Tseden’s Film wins Award in Shanghai Festival
Posted on: June 22, 2009
Yet, another good news on the Tibetan creativity front. Film maker Pema Tseden from Amdo has won the Grand Prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival, which just concluded, for his “The Search.”
Film maker Pema Tseden la
This film is said to be based on a Tibetan opera and reportedly portrays the developments in the search of characters to play the prince and princess in the opera. The Shanghai Festival jury (led by Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle) had an interesting comment regarding Pema Tseden la’s film: “The most challenging film we saw, almost a meditation in patience as well as an exercise in it for the viewer, uncompromising but funny and humane too. We look forward to many more films from Tibet.”
I have seen his another film, “The Silent Mani Stones,” which is a good study of the internal turmoil of a young monk in the face of modern cultural onslaughts in his society (This is my take although the film may have a totally different meaning to others.).
Here is a brief bio of Pema Tseden (Wanma Caidan), which I found on the internet: “writer, director, male, born in 1969 in Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai province; a postgraduate from the Department of Tibetan Language and Literature, Northwest University, and Beijing Film Academy. He has been publishing literature works one after another since 1991 in newspapers and magazine , such as Tibetan literature, Tibetan literature and Art, literature of nationalities, etc.”
Here is a partial list of films he has directed since 2002. (I have got this from the internet and this may not be a complete list, too):
The Silent Holy Stone (plot short film,30 minutes), 2003.
A Day of the Little living Buddha, 2003.
The Grassland (plot short film, 22minutes), 2004.
Love Story (documentary), 2005.
The Silent Holy Stone (plot long film), 2005.
June 23, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Your readers may be very interested in hearing about a Buddhist Printing exhibition from Tibet. Please take a look at this blog entry to read more: http://bit.ly/xUisl. The Center for Book & Paper Arts is trying to get the word out about this exhibition and I thought that your blog would be a great place to do that. Please contact Elizabeth Burke-Dain at eburkedain@colum.edu if you have any questions or would like to publish more images of the show on your blog. Thank you.