Pema Tseden’s first short films:
The Silent Manistone
Jingjingde manishi
China, 2002, 30 min
Pema Tseden shot this short film during his first year as a film student. It previews, in concentrated form, his first feature The Silent Holy Stones. A very young lama’s devotion to a Chinese television series Journey to the West introduces gentle contrasts between traditional Tibetan tales, monastery life, and video entertainment seeping in from the secular outside world.
The Grassland
Caoyuan
China, 2004, 20 min
Pema Tseden was the first Tibetan director to graduate from the Beijing Film Academy. His graduation film is the first of many road trips in his oeuvre. As an elderly couple searches for the thief of their precious yak, basic moral quandaries — what is a crime, what is justice? — turn out not to be as simple as they first appear.
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Pema Tseden
China
In Tibetan with English subtitles
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Tibetan director Pema Tseden became one of the most remarkable filmmakers of this century, revolutionizing the representation of Tibet and Tibetans and sharing his visions of authentic Tibetan life with the entire film-going world by reimagining how narrative cinematic fiction could operate within so-called “Chinese minority cinema”.