Contested Tibetan Landscapes in the Films of Pema Tseden (vol 10, pg 135, 2016)

This article closely examines the representation of landscapes in two films, The Silent Holy Stones (2005) and Old Dog (2011), both by the Tibetan director, Pema Tseden. Through mobilizing a range of formal techniques, including the use of long takes, a documentary aesthetic, and foregrounding acts of looking, these films portray Tibetan landscapes as realms of contested meanings between different subjects. I argue that these contested Tibetan landscapes in the films of Pema Tseden open up the space for the emergence of a heterogeneous Tibetan subject whose imagined worlds and lived realities cannot be captured by any singular narrative or dualism between tradition-modernity or resistance-subjection. At the same time, they suggest a form of minority ethnic self-representation that resists homogenizing and re-naturalizing a singular Tibetan voice. This essay situates Pema Tseden's films in a larger sphere of contemporary Tibetan cultural production in the PRC, and proposes connections to projects of cultural activism and cultural renaissance enacted by minoritized groups in other contemporary contexts.