The vast land of the Tibetan-inhabited region of Qinghai and the disorientation of its young generation are the highlights of Chinese film Tharlo, presented at the ongoing Venice International Film Festival on Friday.
Tharlo, a Tibetan ethnic shepherd in his forties, lives a quiet life alone in the mountains with his hundreds of sheep. But his life turns upside down when he is asked to go to the city to have his photo taken for his first ID card.
The photographer sends him to a young and pretty hairdresser who soon shows interest in him and his ponytail. But she is not serious when talking about traveling together to Lhasa or Beijing and will bring him into a state of confusion and desensitization.
These feelings are typical of today's young people in the Tibetan-inhabited Chinese regions, who find themselves disoriented in between the choice of a simple life and the attractiveness of complex modernity, the film director Pema Tseden told Xinhua in an interview at the Lido of Venice on Friday.
"This state of mind is very contradictory. On the one hand, they would like to go on with their traditional life, but on the other hand they do not want to lose the new things. And it is very difficult to take a direction," he said.
The film, Pema went on explaining to Xinhua, shows the right need of development for the Tibetan ethnic minority but at the same time the importance of conserving its own traditions.
"In fact cinema is also a way to spread the culture, language and customs of the Tibetan ethnic minority," the director highlighted.
The female protagonist is played by Yangshik Tso, a Tibetan ethnic singer. She opened the film's press conference in Venice singing a traditional song to an enthusiastic audience of journalists and critics acquainted with the sounds of the Tibetan-inhabited Chinese regions.
"In my real life I did meet people like the character that I played in the film, and I tried my best to interpret her. I also wondered many times how would I have behaved if I were in her place, but could not find a certain answer," she said.
In fact "reality" and "art" are two key words for Pema. His film was shot in Tibetan language and with a mostly Tibetan cast in a time lapse of just 25 days, while postproduction lasted one month, he noted.
Tharlo, made in black and white as the ruggedness in the images speaks of the ambience and the state of being of the protagonist, before being a film was first a novel written by Pema himself.
Born in a village of Qinghai in 1969, the writer started his career as a director by doing several short films, before directing in 2005 The Silent Holy Stones, the first film in Tibetan language shot with a Tibetan ethnic cast and crew.
Tharlo is included in the Venice festival's Orizzonti section, dedicated to the latest cinema trends, and has also been listed among those in competition for the special award Different Smile Venice 2015, given to films that are focused on cultural integration and social issues.
Pema said his competition film is planned to be distributed both in China and abroad. The producer, Wang Xuebo, was confident that the audiences will appreciate the work, though being not a so-called "commercial" one.
"I believe many people will like Tharlo's highly artistic sense. Through this film they will also meet the precious culture of one of China's ethnic minorities ... Actually I used to be a film director myself and I am convinced that all good films have good possibilities," he told Xinhua.
