Pema Tseden
A Complete Film Retrospective of the Groundbreaking Tibetan Filmmaker
Museum of the Moving Imagem NYC
Sep 6 — Sep 15, 2024
Guest programmed by Shelly Kraicer
Co-sponsored by OVID.tv
“His ability to speak eloquently of individual despair and the emergency of cultural obliteration is masterful; his ability to do this in films of such eloquent, quiet beauty is nothing short of astonishing.”
—Cinema Scope
“Tseden’s work is remarkable for shedding light on daily life in an oft-mythologized part of the world.”
—Sight & Sound
“The most important independent Tibetan filmmaker.”
—Shelly Kraicer, VIFF
One of the most exciting and inspiring filmmakers to emerge so far this century, Pema Tseden died last year in mid-career, at 53. Born to farmer-herder parents in the Tibetan highlands of Amdo, Qinghai Province, China, he studied Tibetan literature and in the early 1990s began publishing short stories in both Tibetan and Chinese. The first Tibetan to graduate from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, where he shot two short films, he became the first Tibetan filmmaker working in China to shoot a feature entirely in Tibetan: 2005’s The Silent Holy Stones. Pema Tseden created seven more features, with largely the same group of collaborators, who are now the nucleus of a Tibetan film community continuing his legacy. Continue reading Pema Tseden film retrospective