Tibet: Real-life reels

Frames from the narrative feature. Pics Courtesy/Pablo Bartholomew

Imagination is boundless in the world of fiction. And yet, writers in the genre will tell you otherwise. For filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, this limit is drawn by reality. Tomorrow, the duo will host a special screening of their 2018 narrative feature film The Sweet Requiem, at a Versova venue, which will be followed by a discussion on how documentary evidence can shape fictional filmmaking.

"The film tells the story of Dolkar, a 26-year-old Tibetan exile, who lives in Delhi. She had escaped from Tibet with her father 18 years ago, making a perilous trek across the Himalayas that ended in tragedy. Dolkar has suppressed all recollection of that traumatic incident, but when she unexpectedly encounters Gompo, the guide who abandoned them during their journey, memories of her escape are reignited and she is propelled on an obsessive search for retribution and closure," Sonam, who was born in Darjeeling to Tibetan refugee parents, shares.

This movie, he adds, was inspired by a friend and an acclaimed Swiss photographer Manuel Bauer's photo essays, Escape From Tibet. "Manuel is documenting various aspects of the exile Tibetan community, including a wonderful book on the Dalai Lama. In 1995, at a time when thousands of young Tibetan children were being sent by their parents from Tibet to India, to gain a Tibetan education in the schools set up by the Tibetan government-in-exile, Manuel made an incredibly risky journey. He accompanied a father and his young daughter as they escaped from Lhasa over the Himalayas to reach India. It was one of the first visual records of the harrowing journey that thousands of Tibetans were making, simply for an opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama and provide a Tibetan education for their children. His photographs were an inspiration during the making of our film," Sonam reveals.

The screening, the duo explains, aims at shedding light on reality plays a huge part in creating fiction. They will share with the participants how they used fiction as a way of expanding on their documentary practice.

Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

"The main focus of the workshop is to show how documentary evidence has shaped our fictional filmmaking. We will use the example of Manuel Bauer's audio-visual presentation of his photographs documenting a real-life escape from Tibet, in tandem with our fictional feature film that covers similar ground. It is also important for marginalised communities like the Tibetan exiles, who are under-represented in cinema, to be able to see their own stories," shares Sarin.

The workshop, which is being supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in India and Bhutan under their initiative SwitzerlandIndia, will also shed light on the challenges of making such films. For Sarin and Sonam, the biggest challenge was casting. "There are very few Tibetans in the exile community who have any acting experience, and we ended up working with a mostly non-professional cast. The locations were also extremely tough to navigate, from shooting at around 15,000 ft in late winter, to the full summer heat of Delhi in May. This was more difficult given that ours was a low-budget film. However, the cast and crew were magnificent, and we have many fond memories of the shoot," she signs off.

On April 30; 7.30 pm
At Harkat Studios, Aaram Nagar Part 2, Versova, Andheri West.
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