Committed Cinema: Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam

3/16/14 to 3/20/14

We welcome Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam to BAM/PFA as part of our ongoing series Committed Cinema, dedicated to filmmakers who explore vital contemporary issues in aesthetically innovative ways. The Dharamsala-based duo presents two films that focus on the plight of Tibet and its exiled people. Part of CAAMFest 2014.

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Past Films

Dreaming Lhasa
- Thursday, March 20 7pm
Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam (India/U.K., 2005). Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in conversation with Gaetano Kazuo Maida. A young Tibetan American journeys to Dharamsala, India, and discovers dub reggae and CIA agents among the Tibetan exiles there. "The first film to capture the majesty of Tibetan Buddhist culture and the complexity of its ties to the outside world” (TIFF). (90 mins)
The Sun Behind the Clouds
- Sunday, March 16 6:10 PM
Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam (India/U.K., 2009). Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in person. 2008 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the takeover of Tibet, prompting uprisings and the biggest upheaval in decades in Lhasa and other cities. This documentary chronicles the Tibetan struggle for freedom. (79 mins)

Committed Cinema: Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam

3/16/14 to 3/20/14

There are political and social issues you come to out of a passion for change and there are those you almost breathe in, the atmosphere of a culture inhaled like a lung full of indigenous provocation. Melding these two impulses, Indian-born filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have released a committed body of work supporting the plight of Tibet and its exiled people. Now based in Dharamsala, this inseparable couple began making engaged documentaries in the early 1980s, launching their careers with The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City, followed by the well-received The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche (1991). Subsequent works would be almost exclusively concerned with Tibetan autonomy in all its complexity, best seen in their even-tempered The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom (2010) which balances the Dalai Lama's “Middle Way” against a younger generation's impatience for independence...

Serendipitously, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam's story begins in the East Bay where they met while Sarin was earning her M.F.A. at the California College of the Arts and Sonam was at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. It was from this base that they made their first documentary about the Sikh community in the San Joaquin Valley. After several years in England, Sarin and Sonam returned to India and formed White Crane Films. To foster a conversation among the diverse ethnic groups of their hometown, they launched the Dharamsala International Film Festival, now in its third year.

We are most pleased to welcome Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam to CAAMFest and BAM/PFA as part of our ongoing Committed Cinema series. Join us on Thursday, March 20 for a special conversation with the artists and Gaetano Kazuo Maida, executive director of the Buddhist Film Foundation.

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This series is part of CAAMFest.
Special admission prices apply: General admission: $12; CAAM and BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students: $10 (limit 2 tickets per person per program); Non-UC Berkeley students, 65 & over, 17 & under, disabled persons: $11 (limit 1 ticket per person per program). Please note that our second-feature discount does not apply to these programs. Tickets are nonrefundable, and may not be exchanged.

Support for Committed Cinema has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to Stephen Gong and Masashi Niwano, CAAM, for bringing Sarin and Sonam to the Bay Area for a media residency.

Committed Cinema: Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam

3/16/14 to 3/20/14

Past Films

Dreaming Lhasa

The Sun Behind the Clouds