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Volume 20, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1474-2756
  • E-ISSN: 2040-0578
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Abstract

The Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden is renowned for using the road movie as a means of interrogating the relationship between his characters and society in the Tibetan areas of the PRC. As his protagonists travel, the natural settings become an integral part of the journey through the Tibetan lands. The amalgamation of movement and landscapes enables the emergence of a Tibetan subject whose complex and heterogenous self-representation defies the dualism of tradition and modernity. In this article, I argue that Pema Tseden’s recent feature (2018) marks an aesthetic and thematic departure from his earlier work. Rather than looming large over the characters, the landscapes serve as an underlying framework for a heightened emphasis on the interaction between the characters. At the heart of the film is the notion of Tibetan masculinity in crisis. Whilst portraying the ways that history, culture and tradition haunt the men in the film, Pema Tseden also turns his attention to the female characters. Proposing a new take on Tibetan masculinities who assume the previously women-only roles of , he offers a unique perspective on and in New Tibetan Cinema.

© 2022 The Author(s)
This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The CC BY licence permits commercial and noncommercial reuse. To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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2023-06-28
2024-04-29
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Boxed within the frame: Tibetan masculinities in transformation in Pema Tseden’s Jinpa
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 20, 91 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1386/ncin_00032_1
/content/journals/10.1386/ncin_00032_1
/content/journals/10.1386/ncin_00032_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): Buddhism; Jinpa; landscape; masculinity; representation; road movie; Tibet; Tibetan cinema

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