UK Asian Film Festival presents a special tribute screening of Snow Leopard with an introduction from Sonali Joshi and a live Dranyen Lute performance by Tibetan mountain and folk singer, Ngawang Lodup

Having premiered at the 2023 Venice and Toronto International Film Festival, Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden’s final completed feature, Snow Leopard, is set in the vast and stunning Tibetan terrain, and uses the fabled creature to pose and probe the universal question of tradition versus modernity. An unexpected incident causes a snow leopard to break into the sheep pen of a local herder and kill nine rams not only causing a generational row in the family and attracting a TV crew into the village, but also triggering a heated debate on whether to honour or abandon traditional values in modern day Tibet.

Curator’s note: In many ways, Snow Leopard is both a continuation and corroboration of Pema's cinematic style which allows the film to unfold gently but persuasively through the friction between man and nature, past and present, myth and reality, all playing out on the cultural canvas of his native land, Tibet. As Pema had hoped, his conscious decision to divide the story into two distinct parts, realistic (present) and surreal (past), transforms the film into a 'true work of magical realism.' The issue of extinction and preservation is central to the film and has the resonance of the Eastern philosophical wisdom of co-existence versus dominance, something that is played out in the ideological differences between the father and son.  Matthias Delvaux’s slow and hypnotic cinematography is an invitation to observe, absorb and become one with the high altitude Tibetan landscape (16000 ft.) and its inhabitants’ day-to-day struggles that seem deceptively local but lend the film and its core message a strong universal appeal.

About Pema Tseden (December 1969 – 8 May 2023)        

'I think Tibet has always been mythologized and worshipped, and made more remote.…People's psychological expectations and experiences of Tibet are stuck in the past. They don't understand the new Tibet.' – Pema Tseden (npr.org)

Described as a pioneer of the Tibetan New Wave, and with films like The Grassland (2004), Silent Holy Stones (2006), Tharlo (2015), Jinpa (2018) and Balloon (2019), Pema Tseden was a critically-acclaimed Tibetan director, screenwriter and prolific author who passed away on 8 May 2023 at the age of 53, leaving behind a cinematic legacy that is aesthetically rich, meditative and offers a deeply authentic portrayal of Tibet without the stereotypical exoticism. Hailing from the Tibetan area of Amdo, Pema became the first Tibetan student to graduate from the prestigious Beijing Film School and he was also the first filmmaker in greater China to make films entirely in Tibetan language. In the words of his biographer Dhondup T. Rekjong, 'Pema Tseden revolutionized contemporary Tibetan cinema by expanding the reach of the Tibetan narrative on a global scale, as well as by inspiring a new generation of filmmakers.'

This screening is our humble attempt to honour the life and work of this great Tibetan auteur whose cinematic craft was anchored in the desire to 'accurately capture the essence of life in Tibet' (as he once described) and will continue to inspire generations of filmmakers across the world.

About Ngawang Lodup

Ngawang Lodup is a renowned Tibetan mountain and folk singer based in the UK, and is famous for performing Traditional Tibetan nomadic ballads and contemporary folk songs on electric Mandolin and Dranyen lute. He grew up in the Amdo region of Tibet–a harsh but magical environment on the north-eastern corner of the Tibetan Plateau, known for its wind-swept grasslands, fine horses and nomadic culture. Since settling in the UK in 2004, Ngawang has garnered great acclaim for his renditions of Tibetan folk songs and has been performing across the UK, USA and Europe over the last decade, including Norway, Poland, Estonia, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. In April 2015, he became the first World Music artist to join the “BBC Introducing” initiative, and in September that year, he performed at the O2 Arena in London for the Dalai Lama amidst a packed crowd of international audiences. He was subsequently invited to appear at the WOMAD music festival, Shamba festival, Greenbelt Festival, Musicport Festival and GLOBALTICA World Cultures Festival, and has since been extensively featured in various newspapers.

Sonali Joshi

The film will be introduced by Sonali Joshi. Sonali is a curator, writer and subtitler, Founder/ Director of Day for Night Film & Visual Arts, and Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival. She founded Day for Night with the aim of enabling broader access to underrepresented areas of cinema through curatorial projects, specialist distribution and access (subtitling for the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing and foreign languages; audio-description). She is one of the founders of ExcludedUK and Director of Policy and Communications.

Anupma Shanker

The film has been chosen by UKAFF guest curator Anupma Shanker. Anupma is a film curator and archives researcher, with a deep and evolving interest in colonial & post-colonial screen narratives. Her curatorial practice is focussed on researching, screening and creating conversations around heritage and classic world cinema, with the aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, both within and outside the UK.