TIBET-CHINA: New Film Rekindles Beijing’s Wrath

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 5 1998 (IPS) - Yet another film about Tibet, a favourite subject in American film circles, has earned the ire of Chinese officials who call it an attempt to “deceive” world audiences on the situation in the Himalayan land.

‘Windhorse’ is the third Hollywood production about Tibet to hit movie screens after two recent and equally controversial films, ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ and ‘Kundun’.

Chinese authorities had demanded the cancellation of the Washington premiere last week of ‘Windhorse’, which was shot clandestinely in Tibet and Nepal and directed by Academy Award winner Paul Wagner.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington called the film an attempt to smear China’s policy toward Tibet, where dissident groups are seeking goals ranging from genuine self-rule to independence from China.

The spokesman said the film would not help Americans develop a “fair understanding” of Tibet, and demanded its withdrawal from the Washington International Film Festival last week.

The Chinese slammed ‘Windhorse’ even before its official premiere, dismissing the “political realism” that earned it the awards of Best U.S. Independent Film and best director at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in California in March.

Subsequently, the official ‘China Daily’ ran an editorial criticising ‘Windhorse’, along with other U.S. films about Tibet. ‘Windhorse’ was trying to “deceive audiences” and “hurt a nation’s feelings”, the paper said.

The film was made even more sensitive by the fact that it came out months ahead of a visit by U.S. President Bill Clinton to China in June.

‘Windhorse’ director Wagner sees the movie as a sequel of sorts to ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ and ‘Kundun’, two recent American films that climax with China’s invasion of Tibet in the 1950s.

Windhorse picks up a 1996 story and focuses on the lives of three young Tibetans searching for personal fulfillment amid the clashing cultures of Tibetans and ethnic Chinese in what Beijing considers the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Charming Dolkar is a gifted disco singer who, with the help of her Chinese boyfriend, stands on the verge of stardom. Her brother Dorjee, an idle drunkard, regains his nationalism after meeting a young, Tibetan-speaking American tourist. Their cousin, Pema, is a Buddhist nun imprisoned and tortured by the government for her religious beliefs.

Though different, the lives of the three Tibetans carry a common theme — the tragic struggle to preserve Tibetan culture and political freedom after 40 years of Chinese occupation.

Calling the film a work of political realism, Wagner said: “I think of it in the tradition of ‘Salt of the Earth, the 1953 film about Mexican American mine workers created by Hollywood black- listed filmmakers, based on actual political events and using non- actors from the little village where the story is set.”

The film’s uniqueness also stems from the fact that several crucial scenes were shot clandestinely inside Tibet. Due to possible political repercussions, many Tibetan cast and crew members are identified in ‘Windhorse’ credits with the phrase “name withheld”.

Even while shooting in Nepal, the crew was forced to conceal the exact nature of the film project for fear that the topic’s sensitivity would prompt Nepali authorities halt the production.

Reports say that Nepali officials asked the filmmakers to bring in for review all the material they shot. This happened on the last day of production, while cast and crew were filming an anti- Chinese demonstration set in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, and one of the most eloquent scenes in the movie.

The film was saved by the quick thinking of the crew, which had arranged for the valuable footage to be carried out of the country a few days earlier.

Virtually all of the cast and crew are said to be Tibetans with no previous film experience, which heightens the sense of ‘political realism’ claimed by Wagner.

But the Chinese are not impressed by the supposed creativity of American films on Tibet. Earlier in fact, Beijing launched a counter-propaganda drive to demolish as “sheer fabrication” the film ‘Seven Years in Tibet’.

Last month, ‘China Daily’ ran a one-page opinion piece based on an interview with Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, the controversial Tibetan who signed a 17-point agreement with Mao’s government that laid the foundations for China’s annexation of Tibet.

Jigme, vice-chairman of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference, China’s highest advisory body, is portrayed in ‘Seven Years in Tibet’, based on a book written by Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer.

Jigme said the film does not match the facts, except for trivial events like the Dalai Lama’s study of English. For example, the film shows Jigme sending Harrer a robe. “There was not such a thing at all, I had never thought of sending a robe to him. Harrer and I didn’t have that sort of contact and relations.”

Harrer was introduced to Jigme at a party held in a Lhasa park in 1948, and later visited Jigme’s house once or twice. “We only talked about some trivial things when we met, nothing in depth, and we didn’t talk about political issues,” Jigme said.

He called the film a vicious personal attack, one with many scenes “fabricated by movie-makers”.

Asked why he signed the 17-point agreement, Jigme said: “The 400 million Chinese (at the time) in other parts of the country could make a living after the Chinese Communist Party took over political power, so why would our less than 1 million Tibetans not be able to live?’

Jigme recalled that after communist China was founded in 1949, there were rumours in Lhasa that communists killed monks, burned monasteries, looted properties, raped women and even practiced cannibalism.

But “if the Communist Party was like what the rumours said, I think the Chinese would not stand the bullying of the Communist Party,’ he concluded.

For the Tibetan opposition however, four decades of Chinese rule have increased impatience and a tendency to turn to violence. Last month, a Tibetan protester who set himself on fire died of his injuries in New Delhi, India.

The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in Dharamsala, India, says he has so far been able to persuade people to shun violence but added “it’s clear that a sense of frustration and urgency is building up among many Tibetans”.