Tibetan cinema world mourns loss of groundbreaking filmmaker Pema Tseden
- The award-winning director, who died aged 53 last week, was regarded as a pioneer of the Tibetan New Wave who offered a glimpse into local life and culture
- Pema Tseden helped to pave the way for the next generation of filmmakers and was hailed as ‘a beacon of hope and resilience for all Tibetans’
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The Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, who saw it as his mission to tell people’s stories in their own voices, died last Monday at the age of 53.
The China Academy of Art, where he was a professor, said in a statement that he died due to a sudden illness.
The director, widely regarded as the pioneer of the Tibetan New Wave, is remembered by many for having achieved the impossible in telling Tibetan stories that were well-received by audiences inside and outside China.
His award-winning feature films – including Tharlo, Jinpa and Balloon – were acclaimed for offering a glimpse into local culture, religion, tradition and modernity through the lens of local people.
Filmmakers face numerous challenges when trying to tell the stories of China’s ethnic minorities, ranging from the dominance of Han Chinese cinema to the country’s censors, who impose extra scrutiny on content concerning Tibetan culture.
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Pema Tseden, who was born into a pastoral community in Qinghai province in 1969, was also acclaimed as an award-winning novelist and translator.
His cinematic debut was the 2005 film The Silent Holy Stones, the first film by a Tibetan made entirely in the Tibetan language.
Hao Jian, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, wrote in a tribute published on the social media platform WeChat that while Pema Tseden’s works focused on Tibet’s culture and history, politics was also an important theme.
“Interweaving and blending political tensions with personal action, he writes about the choices and ultimate fate of his characters in their political and cultural historical situations,” he wrote.
“From his film narratives, we can metaphorically see the historical and cultural changes in Tibet over the decades.”
Robert Barnett, a professorial research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said Pema Tseden established Tibetan film “as a genre that is immediately recognisable and unique, and with astonishing creativity”.
“But gradually it became clear that his films also [contain] elements of world cinema, not local at all,” Barnett said.
His films talked about universal issues that related to all of us and were not specific to Tibet, Barnett said, and more importantly that “Pema was extraordinarily attentive to formal aspects of cinematic art and writing. So his films show ways of telling stories that are of great importance to story tellers anywhere.”
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“When I looked at those films that purported to represent my ethnic group, I saw a lot of problems, like in the details of their depictions of everyday Tibetan life,” he said.
“I found them very unsatisfactory, and I knew that if I were to make a film about my own culture one day, my film would be very different.”
But he also talked about the restrictions he faced, saying: “Before I learned about censors, it felt like there were a great number of topics in Tibetan culture that I could film. But after you’ve learned more, you know there aren’t many.”
Karin Chien, the founder of dGenerate Films which distributes his films in the United States, described Pema Tseden as a “rare master filmmaker”, adding that “his stories often operated on the level of allegory, that is his films provide so many layers of meaning that they invited repeat viewings”.
Before I learned about censors, it felt like there were a great number of topics in Tibetan culture that I could film
“In many ways, Pema was the first. He made it look easy, but I know it wasn’t,” Chien said.
“It has been an uphill climb to find the right audiences for his films in the US, but that’s not because of his films, which are extraordinary,” she said, noting that the US has always been a tough market for non-English language films.
“It’s been impressive to see Pema open so many doors, pave so many roads for the Tibetan filmmakers that followed.”
His work helped inspire a younger generation of Tibetan filmmakers, including his son Jigme Trinley, whose feature debut One and Four won domestic and international film festival awards, and Lhapal Gya, who worked with Pema Tseden as executive director while studying at university and whose debut feature Wangdrak’s Rain Boots premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2018.
Barnett described Pema Tseden as a filmmaker who preferred to let his writing and films speak, noting that “I think that was a remarkable strength, because those films and writings raise questions rather than offer answers”.
Pema Tseden also explored new ways of cinematic story-telling, Barnett noted. He left his character’s internal life and his own judgments unstated and unknown, leaving each viewer to form their own opinions for themselves.
“I think he drew this approach from studying world cinema, especially from Iran, and then drawing on traditional Tibetan art forms, but in his work he shows possibilities within film and story that are often forgotten, perhaps not even demonstrated so clearly before.”
In Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet autonomous region, crowds gathered on Wednesday to light candles and pay tribute after the news of his death broke.
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Dhondup T Rekjong, a Tibetan writer and PhD candidate at Northwestern University, wrote on Twitter that his “legacy goes beyond transforming modern Tibetan cinema; he amplified Tibetan voices globally”.
He added: “May Pema Tseden’s legacy be a beacon of hope and resilience for all Tibetans, inspiring us to continue sharing our untold stories with the world.”
