A Road of Prayer

Directed by Tenzin Sedon
2016
107 minutes

Post-screening discussant: Meg McLagan, Visiting Professor of Professional Practice, Film Studies Program, Barnard College, Columbia University

Full-length documentary film by Tibetan woman director Tenzin Sedon. This film provides an intimate look at the daily lives of ordinary people in the director’s hometown of Lhasa, Tibet. Three narratives are joined by place and time and urban change, through which the director explores “the meanings of religion and belief in an ethnic nation.”

Filmmaker bio: Tenzin Sedon is a documentary filmmaker based in Lhasa, where she founded the Dawn Independent Film Studio (2015-2023). In August 2023, she arrived in New York City to start the MFA program in Graduate Film Production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her current film project focuses on a mainland Tibetan middle school, “Gongkang Middle School,” which is located in Shanghai and is part of a unique schooling system designed for Tibetan minorities in major cities throughout China since 1989. The director herself attended the school at the age of twelve. In 2019, she returned to Shanghai and filmed at the school from 2019-2023. The film currently is in the post-production stage.

This screening is a part of:

LEGACIES: Pema Tseden & New Tibetan Cinema Series Finale—Films by the Next Generation

This weekend program is the finale of a year-long tribute series entitled, “LEGACIES: Pema Tseden & New Tibetan Cinema,” co-sponsored by Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Modern Tibetan Studies Program, and Department of Film and Media Studies. Pema Tseden (1969-2023) was a pioneer of the Tibetan New Wave cinema and inspired a new generation of Tibetan filmmakers.