Directed by Pema Tseden • Drama • With Zong Zhi, Manla Jiepu, Dobe Dorje, Drolma Gyab, Lumo Tso • 2013 • 105 minutes
A director, his assistant, and a businessman drive through the Amdo region of Tibet, scouring small villages to find actors for their adaptation of the namthar of Drime Kunden, an opera traditionally performed for the Tibetan New Year, that tells the story of a prince-an early incarnation of Buddha-who gives away all his possessions, his wife and children, and even his own eyes.
Driving through the country's stunning landscapes, the crew meets frustration in their search for actors who can live up to the legendary roles. They find that while many of the traditions they would like to film have persisted, others are disappearing.
Directed by Pema Tseden, whose SILENT HOLY STONES was China's first Tibetan-language film, THE SEARCH reveals a contemporary Tibet where the ancient and the modern co-exist.
"This film uses perfectly framed long takes, from a largely distant yet intimately engaged camera...a masterpiece of understated emotional longing set against an urgent desire to preserve a disappearing culture."—Cinema Scope
Directed by Hu Jie • Documentary • 2019 • 114 minutes
SPARK opens by the side of a road in Lanzhou City, northwestern China, as trucks rumble through a blasted hillside. An elderly man walks along the dusty road and pauses to point to a nearby spot—the former execution grounds. “They executed ma...
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2016 • 147 minutes
Director Wang Bing brings his careful eye to the mountainous border-region of northeastern Myanmar in Ta’ang, a powerful and revealing observational documentary that follows members of the Ta’ang minority as they flee to China to escape an...
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2013 • 238 minutes
Within the gates of an isolated mental institution in in southwest China's Yunnan province, patients are confined to one single floor of a building. Once locked in, with little contact from the outside world, anything goes.
The facility's...
