Pema Tseden, Tibetan New Wave director, has died suddenly of an unspecified illness. Born in Guide, Qinghai, Pema Tseden spent three years teaching at an elementary school before applying to the Northwest Minzu University in Lanzhou to study Tibetan Language and Literature. After publishing several short stories, in 2002 he entered the Beijing Film Academy to study filmmaking.
Pema Tseden’s first full-length film, The Silent Holy Stones (2005), features the story of a child monk in Tibet, who is captured by a newly imported television that screens the Journey to the West, a 1986 TV adaption of the eponymous 16th-century novel on a Buddhist legend. His empathetic lens, akin to Abbas Kiarostami’s camera language, was considered the first to capture the reality of Tibet, removed from the Orientalist imaginations of both Chinese language film and Western productions. His later works, such as The Search or Soul Searching (2009), Tharlo (2015) and Balloon (2019), continue to explore the hybrid cultural experience of contemporary Tibetans, while Jinpa (2018) won the Orizzonti Award for Best Screenplay in the 75th Venice International Film Festival.
Earlier this year, he wrapped up Singpangtra, while Snow Leopard, finished last July, is scheduled for release later this year.
