May 28 at 4.30 pm Screening and encounter with directors Ritu Sarin e Tenzing Sonam Free admission
THE REINCARNATION OF KHENSUR RINPOCHE, 1991, 62 minuti
Choenzey is a 47-year-old monk living in a Tibetan refugee monastery in South India. His spiritual master, Khensur Rinpoche, a revered high lama, has been dead for four years. According to Tibetan belief, he will soon be reincarnated. It is Choenzey's responsibility, as his closest disciple, to find the reincarnation and look after him. The film follows Choenzey's search and his eventual discovery of an impish but gentle 4-year-old boy who is recognized by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan State Oracle to be the reincarnation. Without sentimentality, the film captures the moving relationship that develops between the erstwhile disciple and his young master.
“Before the shooting of Little Buddha I saw a movie called The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche, directed by Tenzing Sonam and Ritu Sarin, a beautiful documentary about a monk who goes to Tibet, smuggles a child out of Tibet, takes him to the Dalai Lama and the oracle, and is told: “Yes, this is the reincarnation of your master”. He takes the boy to his monastery in southern India, and the whole movie is informed by the relationship between the tutor and the boy. It shows a man who becomes for this boy father and mother. He gives the boy food, he washes him and he plays with him. At the same time the boy is the reincarnation of his teacher. So he is tremendously respectful of this boy. And I thought: but isn’t that the perfect relationship we should have with children?”- Bernardo Bertolucci, Sight and Sound, April 1994
THE THREAD OF KARMA, 2007, 50 minutes
In 1991, filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam made The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche, which followed the search and discovery of a 4-year-old reincarnated lama, Phara Khenchen Rinpoche. Sixteen years later, the directors revisit the reincarnation at Drepung Monastery in South India. The film offers an intimate look at the life of a young lama as he aspires to live up to the reputation of his former incarnation. It also explores his moving relationship with the two people closest to him, his attendant and his spiritual master, both of whom were connected to him in his previous life. By focusing on these ties that cut across lifetimes, the film paints a touching portrait of the Rinpoche even as it demystifies the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of reincarnation.
Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have been working together for more than three decades. They worked as independent filmmakers in San Francisco and London before returning to India in 1996. They are currently based in Dharamshala. A recurring subject in their work is Tibet, forming an intimate engagement at different levels: personally, politically and artistically. Through their films and artistic work, Sarin and Sonam have attempted to document, question and reflect on the questions of exile, identity, culture and nationalism that confront the Tibetan people. They have made several award-winning documentary films and video installations. Their documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds (2009), won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival in Prague. They also made the Tibetan feature film, Dreaming Lhasa (2005), produced by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Gere, which premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Their most recent work, The Sweet Requiem (2018), a narrative feature film with a Tibetan cast, also premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Their video installations have shown at numerous venues, including: Contour Biennale 8, Busan Biennale, Mori Art Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna), Khoj Studios (Delhi), and as part of Berlinale Forum Expanded. Sarin and Sonam are also the founder-directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, one of India’s leading independent film festivals, which they founded in 2012.
