The Tibet Film Festival (TFF), one useful example of a Tibetan diasporic film festival, was set up in 2009 to provide a platform for politically-engaged Tibetan cinema, taking place simultaneously in Zurich, Switzerland and Dharamsala, India. It is run by two political organisations, “Filming for Tibet”66
and the “Tibetan Youth Association in Europe”.67 Usually the events at film festivals include screenings of some of the newest Tibetan features, and also a short film competition, alongside a number of rarely screened “Tibetan” films, the makers of which must be Tibetan, whether they are from Tibetan areas or are Tibetans-in- exile. The main purpose of the Tibet Film Festival’s existence has been stated as follows:
The TFF [Tibet Film Festival] is dedicated to Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen, who was detained shortly after completing filming on his documentary film Leaving Fear Behind.[ 68 ] On
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Filming for Tibet “is incorporated as a non-profit organization in Switzerland. Its mission is to support the work of Tibetan filmmakers and the people of Tibet. Leaving Fear Behind is its first production. Filming for Tibet is supported and closely working together with the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe (TYAE)” (cited on its website: http://www.filmingfortibet.org/about/).
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The Tibetan Youth Association in Europe “has offered a platform for young Tibetans where they can engage politically. The TYAE seeks independent and youth-orientated answers to all questions related to Tibet. The desire to provide a service to the community has always been, and still is, in the foreground….The TYAE is the largest Tibetan youth organization in Europe. About half of the members are divided into sections according to interests and region. The rest of the members are involved as individual members. Based in Zurich, the TYAE has been worldwide active for over 40 years.” (cited on its website: http://www.tibetanyouth.org/en/about-us/).
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Leaving Fear Behind (2008) “was made by [Dhondup Wangchen], a thirty-five-year-old Tibetan from Hualong in Haidong prefecture, Qinghai, after he returned from a visit to Europe. He brought a DV camera and travelled around Qinghai in the spring of 2008, asking Tibetans to state, on camera, their views of the forthcoming Olympics in Beijing and government policy in general. He then smuggled the tapes via a visiting overseas Tibetan to a cousin in Switzerland, who edited them into the film. In December, [Dhondup Wangchen] received a six-year sentence for making the film” (Barnett 2015:126). The film can be watched at:
97 December 28, 2009, in a Chinese court, Dhondup Wangchen was sentenced to six years in prison because of his filming activities. The production of Leaving Fear Behind was completed in Switzerland by “Filming for Tibet” and the film was shown all over the world. Dhondup Wangchen was released from prison on June 5, 2014. During last year’s [2014] TFF the campaign “Unchain the Truth” was initiated, which advocates a safe return for Dhondup Wangchen.
(2016, 27th September)69 It can be read in this text that the fundamental and key reason for establishing the TFF was to dedicate it to Dhondup Wangchen and his “activist” and “political” Tibetan film. This clearly shows that the keynote of the film festival is reaching Tibetan-in-exile activists and protests for Tibetan human rights and political protection. In the same way, the majority of the Tibetan films screened at this film festival are short and very provocative and political video footages of violence and protests, made by Tibetans in Tibet or in exile, that “aimed to criticize the Chinese government and to document [cases of Tibetans] abused by the [Chinese authorities]” (Barnett 2015:124).
Figure 11. TFF booklet
On the other hand, the indicators of representing the Tibet-state are also displayed in the film festival booklet (see Figure 11). The flags that have been circled are called “Xueshan Shizi Qi” (雪山狮子旗 in simplified Chinese), literally The Flag of Snow Mountain and Lion. This is
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98 the “Tibetan National Flag” determined by the Tibetan government in exile/diaspora to be one of the representations of Tibetan national sovereignty, “free Tibet”, and the Tibetan independence movement. It can be also seen from this graphic that 1) the presented language is German which shows the film festival and its Tibetan films in the Western discourse; and 2) one of the supporting institutions is the International Campaign for Tibet, which “works to promote human rights and democratic freedoms for the people of Tibet”.70
Therefore, the Tibet Film Festival in Zurich can be defined as a festival celebrating political, activist and experimental Tibetan filmmaking in the Western and Tibetan-in-exile/diasporic discourses. In other words, the TFF aims to be a part of the “Free Tibet” movement; concerns Tibetans being an independent nationality which should be separated from the notion of “Chinese”; and involves the discussion of aspects of Tibetan human rights in contemporary Mainland China. In other words, the TFF was “set up to promote certainly Tibetan identity agendas”, relies on “incorporation and funding opportunities available locally but also benefit[s] from financial support of internationally-positioned organisations that support the cause in question” (Iordanova 2010:261), and aims “to maintain Tibetans-in-diaspora trapped in the net of transitional and transnational identities [and to represent] a new cultural and political language” (Matta 2009:34).
4.1.2 The Tibetan Diaspora and New Tibetan Cinema as “Imagined Communities”