Pema Tseden’s first feature shows how Abbas Kiarostami’s neo-realist stories of children shaped his early style. During Losar, Tibetan New Year, a very young Tibetan lama living in a monastery in Qinghai discovers the delights of binge-watching a Chinese TV serial The Tansen Lama (aka Xi you ji, aka Journey to the West), the famous story of a monk and his fellow traveller the Monkey King who bring Buddhist scriptures to China from India. The young lama shuttles between watching the shows at home and watching in his monastery with his friend the Tulku (a seven-year-old Living Buddha). He also attends — and with unexpectedly humorous results, interrupts — a live traditional Tibetan opera on the life of Prince Drime Kundun (see Pema Tseden’s The Search for another version of this tale).
As the little lama starts to explore various aspects of his identity, he is tugged in different directions: by traditional practices and contemporary society; by folk opera and modern media; by a life apart from and one that flows through the secular world.
May 17: Intro by Compassionate Light curator Shelly Kraicer
Community Partner
Pema Tseden
Luosang Danpai, Quesai, Quhuancang Buddha, Sanmu-dan, Puri-wa, Limaojia
China
2006
In Tibetan with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Screenwriter
Pema Tseden
Cinematography
An Li
Editor
Fang Li, Yifu Zhou
Original Music
Dege Cairang, Dukar Tserang
Also in This Series
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”.