![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This essay analyzes the films of Pema Tseden (པད་མ་ཚེ་བརྟན།), known in Mandarin as Wanma Caidan (万玛才旦), as road movies. The essay considers the use of the road movie genre as a response to the eclipse of the old ‘minority nationalities’ shaoshu minzu (少数民族) category of filmmaking in China, and the rise of the market economy under Chinese neoliberalism. Pema's films feature male protagonists on repeated journeys to and from certain points, or circular journeys, within the Amdo (ཨ༌མདོ) region of the larger Tibetan cultural territory where Pema grew up. The ‘classic’ 1960s American road movie was considered to be a statement of alienation from American society. While remaining true to the genre's focus on interrogation of the relationship between society and self and entirely within Tibetan cultural territory and with almost no sign of Han Chinese people, Pema's films can be understood as asking how Tibetans should respond to the cultural crises brought about by modernization. Furthermore, as they circulate not only in Tibet but across China and through the international film circuit, because they do not offer ready answers, Pema's films also open up to different understandings of Tibet and being Tibetan.
Acknowledgements
This essay has been developed out of presentations during the ‘Transgressing Tibet: International Symposium on Pema Tseden's Films, Fictions, and Translations’ (Hong Kong Baptist University) and ‘Zhang Lu: Nomad Cinema of Korea and China’ (Korean Film Archives) events in 2014, and I am grateful for those who made it possible for me to attend both events and the feedback I received. I thank the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Pema Tseden for allowing me to discuss his films with him on various occasions, and Anup Grewal for our research on contemporary Tibetan culture within the People's Republic of China, including the films of Pema Tseden.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. A report of the United States Congressional-Executive Committee on China (Citation2009) includes a map of that shows both the Tibetan Autonomous Region and the Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures in other provinces of China.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Chris Berry
Chris Berry is a professor of film studies at King's College London. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese cinema and other Chinese screen-based media, as well as neighboring countries. Primary publications include: (with Mary Farquhar) Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006); Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: the Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004); (ed.) Chinese Cinema, 4 vols (London: Routledge, 2012); and (edited with Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel), The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).