Ritu Sarin

Fifty years after the fall of his country, can the Dalai Lama make a breakthrough in his efforts to find a solution to the Tibet question?

Karma, a Tibetan filmmaker from New York, goes to Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's exile headquarters in northern India, to make a documentary about former political prisoners who have escaped from Tibet. She wants to reconnect with her roots but is also escaping a deteriorating relationship back home.One of Karma's interviewees is Dhondup, an enigmatic ex-monk who has just escaped from Tibet. He confides in her that his real reason for coming to India is to fulfill his dying mother's last wish, to deliver a charm box to a long-missing resistance fighter. Karma finds herself unwittingly falling in love with Dhondup even as she is sucked into the passion of his quest, which becomes a journey into Tibet's fractured past and a voyage of self-discovery

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 to 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 His Holiness 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. (columbia.edu)

The Tibetan people are well known for being devoutly religious and peace-loving. Few, however, know that thousands of Tibetans took up arms against the invading forces of Communist China and for more than a decade waged a bitter and bloody guerrilla war of resistance. From the mid-1950s until 1969 the Tibetans were aided in their efforts by an unlikely ally: the CIA.

Age-old customs and traditions collide with a rapidly modernizing India when Hari, a small-town taxi driver, has an arranged marriage to a girl he has never met

Dolkar is a 26-year-old living in exile in Delhi. An unexpected encounter with a figure from her past sets off a flurry of memories she had long repressed regarding the journey that brought her here.

The father, who “ran, ran, and flew” from the source of the Mekong River, sings to his young daughter. Yangchen, who lives in India, meets with her sister, who has returned from France for their mother’s funeral, and reveals the wounds she could not share with their parents. After a brief encounter with his old friend Jigdal, who has come from America, Thangka artist Sonam suddenly feels as though his simple life is too shabby. And Tenzin who lives in Wisconsin arrives in Dharamsala, where he spent his childhood, carrying his father’s ashes.

This film was one of seven commissioned of leading documentary filmmakers in India as part of a series, India’s Quest, to commemorate 50 years of India’s independence. An exploration of the nature and scope of the crisis of modern India. The mechanization of the fishing industry has depleted fish stocks worldwide leading to a major crisis. Along the Kerala coast, traditional fishermen face similar problems as their catch dwindles every season. In the village of Adimalathura, a group of fishermen come together in an effort to reverse this trend. Their solution? Constructing artificial reefs out of ferro-concrete and then planting them on the seabed.

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.

The poignant and personal account of Tenzing Sonam’s first-ever visit to his homeland, from the far reaches of Amdo Province, where Tibetans have lost their language, to Lhasa, the heart of the country.

A portrait of Namdol Lhamo, a middle-aged Tibetan woman who lives in Brussels and works as a housekeeper in an old people's home. Lhamo is one of the famous Drapchi 14, a group of nuns imprisoned in the notorious Drapchi prison of Lhasa in the early 1990s for peacefully demonstrating against the Chinese occupation.