Ritoma documentary shows Tibetan villagers’ embrace of modern life and their struggle to preserve traditions
Academy Award-winning director Ruby Yang’s film uses the setting up of a basketball team in Ritoma, Tibet, to explore how villagers, newly empowered by access to the internet, are adapting to modernity
When the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ruby Yang returned to Ritoma – a village on China’s Tibetan plateau – in 2016, she noticed changes both big and small since her previous visit four years earlier.
For one, lives have improved significantly, thanks to a social enterprise, Norlha workshop, which employs villagers to spin yak wool into luxurious clothing. “[Villagers] are renovating their homes. With the incomes they get from Norlha, they can afford heat and electricity,” Yang observes.
“Norlha are able to teach the women computer skills. In a city like Hong Kong, it’s nothing unusual. But in a small village like that, so far away and remote, that is special. With income, the women have a lot of say in the families. They are no longer just child bearers,” says Yang. Women can now choose their own husbands rather than having their marriages arranged.
Then there are the subtler changes noticeable only to the observant eye: the grass is not as lush, so the nomads have trouble finding food for their herds; horse racing has become so prohibitively expensive that herders now keep an eye on their sheep and yaks on motorbikes instead.
The most impactful change has arguably been the introduction of the internet in 2012. “Suddenly our computers have a new meaning and a new worth. It became this doorway to the whole world,” says Dechen Yeshi, co-founder of Norlha workshop.