Saturday September 30th
Cinema 2
14:15
17 min
India, 2017
Tibetan, with English subtitles
Screening with A Thousand Mothers and Royal Café
This film weaves together vignettes from the everyday life of Namdol Lhamo. She is a middle-aged Tibetan woman residing and working as a housekeeper in an old people’s home in Brussels. But foremost she is an anonymous exile who happens to be one of the famous Singing Nuns of Drapchi. This was a group of nuns imprisoned in Tibet in the early 1990s for peacefully demonstrating against Chinese rule. Namdol Lhamo’s sentence, along with that of her companions, was further increased when they were discovered to be secretly recording protest songs in Drapchi Prison and smuggling the tapes to the outside world. She spent a total of 12 years in prison. This work reflects on the loneliness of political exile, and on the direct progression of the Tibetan freedom struggle.
In cooperation with the Contour Biennale, supported by the Gujal foundation and the Argus Centre for Art and Media.
Directors/ Producers: Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam – With: Namdol Lhamo – Camera/ Editing: Tenzing Sonam – Colourist: Sonu Singh – Soundmix: Depot Records – Songs by: Nuns of Drapchi Prison 1993 – Produced by: White Crane Films – Co-produced by: Contour Biennale 8