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Tenzing Sonam (born 16 January 1959) is a Tibetan film director, writer and essayist based in Dharamshala. He works through his production company, White Crane Films, which he runs with his partner, Ritu Sarin.
Sonam was born in Darjeeling to Tibetan refugee parents. His father, Lhamo Tsering , who was born in the Kumbum area of Amdo (Chinese: Qinghai Province), served as Chief of Operations for the Tibetan resistance movement from the late 50s until the early 70s, and later, as a Minister in the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile. His mother, Tashi Dolma, was from a village near Lhasa in central Tibet.
Sonam studied at the Jesuit boarding school, St Joseph’s College, in Darjeeling. He did his undergraduate studies at St Stephens College, Delhi University. After a year each at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona and Santa Monica College in California, he went to the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism where he specialised in documentary filmmaking.
After graduating from Delhi University in 1978, Sonam worked for a year in the Security Department of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala. He then worked as a dishwasher in Manhattan, a gardener in Scottsdale and a janitor in Berkeley. He was the manager of Del Rey Car Wash in Marina del Rey, California, for a year. After graduating from Berkeley, he worked for four years as Programming Director at the Meridian Trust in London, along with his partner Ritu Sarin. In 1991, he and Sarin founded White Crane Films and has made independent films under the banner ever since. In 2012, Sonam and Sarin started the Dharamshala International Film Festival at McLeod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh. The festival has concluded 11 editions and ranks amongst the best film festivals of India.
Sonam's first film was the student film, Mark Pauline: Mysteries of a Mechanical Mind (1984), which he co-directed with fellow Berkeley classmates, Steve Evans and John Sergeant. A portrait of maverick Bay Area artist Mark Pauline, the film won Third Place at the 1984 Student Emmys. He made his thesis documentary, The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City(1985), as a joint project with Ritu Sarin. Since then, all his film have been made in partnership with Sarin. A recurring subject in their work is Tibet, with which they have been intimately involved in a number of different ways: personally, politically and artistically. Through their films and artwork, they have attempted to document, question and reflect on the questions of exile, identity, culture and nationalism that confront the Tibetan people.
Their latest film, The Sweet Requiem, had its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.
In addition to his role as a filmmaker, Sonam is an essayist and a writer. In 1979, along with the late writer, K. Dhondup, the scholar Tashi Tsering, Thupten Samphel, Kesang Tenzin and Gyalpo Tsering, he founded the pioneering English-language Tibetan poetry journal titled, Lotus Fields, Fresh Winds. He wrote the scripts for the feature films, Dreaming Lhasa (2005) and The Sweet Requiem (2018). His writings have been published in the Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays, Civil Lines, The Hindu, Time magazine, and Himal Southasian. His travel piece, A Stranger in My Native Land, was published in Written Forever: The Best Of Civil Lines. [1]
Sonam and Sarin started the Dharamshala International Film Festival in 2012, with the aim of bringing independent cinema to the Himalayan region, encouraging local filmmaking talent, and creating a meaningful cultural platform to engage the area’s diverse communities.
The festival typically screens 26 contemporary features — narratives and documentaries and short, animation and experimental films over 3-4 days in early November in McLeod Ganj. Sonam and Sarin along with a team of cinephiles curated contemporary independent films until 2018. In 2019, the festival began to accept submissions.
Sonam was a founding member of the Bay Area Friends of Tibet in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the earliest Tibet support groups in the US.
Sonam and Sarin organised the first-ever Tibet Film Festival in London in March 1992 in collaboration with the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA). And in March 2000, they organised Tibet 2000: Survival of the Spirit, a ten-day festival of Tibet at the India International Centre in New Delhi, which included film screenings, photographic exhibitions, the creation of a sand mandala, performances by the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, seminars and panel discussions by well-known writers and scholars, and a public talk by the Dalai Lama.
Sonam and Sarin participated in the KHOJ Marathon with Hans Ulrich Obrist in New Delhi on 22 January 2011. He was also a part of the Engadin Art Talks in Zuoz, Switzerland, in August 2012, a symposium on art and architecture directed by Beatrix Ruf, director and curator of the Kunsthalle Zurich, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programme at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
In 2012, Sonam and Sarin founded the non-profit organisation, White Crane Arts & Media, to fulfil their long-held desire to promote contemporary art, cinema and independent media practices in the Himalayan regions. Its first project, in collaboration with Khoj International Artists’ Association, was an artists’ residency which was held in Dharamshala in October 2012. Its main project – the Dharamshala International Film Festival – had its first edition in November 2012.
Sonam was awarded a residency at the Rockefeller Institute Bellagio Center.
| Year | Film |
|---|---|
| 1985 | The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City (27 mins) |
| 1991 | The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche (62 mins) |
| 1992 | Tibet (15 mins) |
| 1993 | The Trials of Telo Rinpoche (50 mins) |
| 1997 | Fish Tales (33 mins) |
| 1997 | A Stranger in My Native Land (32 mins) |
| 1998 | The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet (50 mins) |
| 1999 | Big Treasure Chest for Future Children: Tibet (26 mins) |
| 2005 | Dreaming Lhasa [2] (90 mins) |
| 2007 | The Thread of Karma (50 mins) |
| 2007 | Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence [3] (26 mins) |
| 2009 | The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle For Freedom [4] (79 mins) |
| 2012 | When Hari Got Married (75 mins) |
| 2018 | The Sweet Requiem (91 mins) |
| Year | Work | Commissioned by | Exhibitions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | rights... & wrongs (single-channel) | Tibet Museum | Tibet Museum; Contour Biennale 8 |
| 2007 | Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence (single-channel) | TBA-21 | TBA-21; Mori Art Museum; Busan Biennale 2010; Ravenna Festival |
| 2008 | Middle Way or Independence? (single-channel) | TBA-21 | TBA-21 |
| 2009 | A Tibet of the Mind (single-channel) | White Crane Films | Art Centre Silkeborg, Denmark |
| 2011 | Mud Stone Slate Bamboo (single-channel) | White Crane Films | Engadin Art Talks, Zuoz, Switzerland; Landings: Extracted Bodies and Self-Cartographies, StudiumGeneraleRietveldAcademie, Amsterdam |
| 2015/17 | Burning Against the Dying of the Lights (multimedia) | White Crane Films | Khoj Studios, New Delhi; Contour Biennale 8 |
| 2015 | Taking Tiger Mountain by Storm (single-channel) | White Crane Films | Khoj Studios, New Delhi; Contour Biennale 8 |
| 2017 | Drapchi Elegy (single-channel) | Contour Biennale 8 | Contour Biennale 8; Kunsthalle Vienna; Marabouparken, Stockholm |
| 2018 | Chronicle of an Arrest Foretold (Instagram action) | Artspace Sydney | Instagram Action |
| 2019 | Shadow Circus (multimedia) | White Crane Films/Savvy Contemporary | Berlinale Forum Expanded 2019 |
| 2022 | Shadow Circus: A Personal Archive of Tibetan Resistance (1957 - 1974) | White Crane Films | India International Centre, New Delhi (additionally supported by International Campaign for Tibet); Kochi-Muziris Biennale Invitations Programme (additionally supported by The Gujral Foundation) |
Dalai Lama is a title given by Altan Khan, the first Shunyi King of Ming China in 1578 AD at Yanghua Monastery to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and incumbent Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, who lives in exile as a refugee in India. The Dalai Lama is considered to be the successor in a line of tulkus who are believed to be incarnations of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Chushi Gangdruk was a Tibetan guerrilla group. Formally organized on 16 June 1958, the Chushi Gangdruk guerrilla fighters fought the forces of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Tibet from 1956 to 1974.
Miss Tibet is an annual beauty pageant held in McLeod Ganj, India. It is produced by Lobsang Wangyal Productions.
Rangzen Shonu was a three-member rock band formed by Tenzin Choesang, Norbu Choephel and Tsering Paljor Phurpatsang. Tibetans in Dharamshala, India.
Dreaming Lhasa is a Tibetan-language film by veteran documentary filmmakers, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, who have been making films about various aspects of Tibet under the banner of White Crane Films since 1990. Written by Tenzing, a first-generation Tibetan born and brought up in exile, Dreaming Lhasa is perhaps, the first Tibetan feature film to explore the state of exile and the issues of identity, culture and politics as they affect the Tibetan refugee community in India.
This is a list of topics related to Tibet.
The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) was founded by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama on reaching McLeod Ganj, Himachal Pradesh, India in exile from Tibet in August 1959. It was then called Tibetan Music, Dance and Drama Society, which was one of the first institutes set up by the Dalai Lama, and was established to preserve Tibetan artistic heritage, especially opera, dance, and music.
McLeod Ganj or McLeodganj is a suburb of Dharamshala in Kangra district, Himachal Pradesh, India. It is known as "Little Lhasa" or "Dhasa" as the Tibetan government-in-exile is headquartered here and there is a significant population of Tibetans in the region.
The Sikyong is the political leader of the Central Tibetan Administration, a Tibetan exile organisation in India also known as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile based on the 2011 Charter of Tibetans-in-exile. The title was created in 2012 after the 14th Dalai Lama decided not to assume any political and administrative authority as the head of the Tibetan Administration for Tibetans-in-exile.
Lobsang Wangyal is a writer, social activist, photojournalist, and events producer, based in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala, India. He has been a stringer reporter and photographer for Agence France-Presse for many years.
Tenzin Bagdro is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and former political prisoner who currently resides at Tashi Choeling Monastery in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Ritu Sarin is an Indian film director, producer and artist based in Dharamshala, India. She is the director of the Dharamshala International Film Festival.
Dr. Tsewang Yishey Pemba MBBS (London) FRCS was the first Tibetan to become a doctor in western medicine, and to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He founded the first hospital in Bhutan. He is also credited for writing the first work of fiction by a Tibetan in English, "Idols on the Path", published in 1966, and is also regarded as the first Tibetan to publish a book in English, "Young Days in Tibet", published by Jonathan Cape in 1957.
The Sun Behind the Clouds looks at China's occupation of Tibet from the perspective of the vocally secessionist Tibetan youth, and from that of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, whose reaction to the Chinese presence has been markedly less confrontational. Directed by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, the film features interviews with the Dalai Lama and Tenzin Tsundue. The Sun Behind the Clouds premiered in the United States at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival before playing at Film Forum in New York City.
The Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) is an international film festival held annually in the Himalayan town McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala in India — home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community in exile since 2012. The 12th edition of DIFF was held from 4 to 7 November 2023, in McLeodganj, Dharamshala.
Tenzin Tsetan Choklay is a Tibetan filmmaker.
Lhasang Tsering is a Tibetan poet, writer, and activist. He was President of the Tibetan Youth Congress and a founding director of Amnye Machen Institute in Dharamshala, India. He is a vociferous and ardent advocate of Tibet's independence and a passionate lover of literature.
Tsering Dolma was the founder of the non-profit refugee organisation Tibetan Children's Villages and was the older sister of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzing Gyatso.
Thubten Samphel was a Tibetan writer, journalist, and government official. He worked as a secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was a spokesperson of the Central Tibetan Administration, based in Dharamshala. He also worked for the administration's think tank, Tibet Policy Institute.
Tashi Tsering, born in 1929 in Guchok, Namling County, Shigatse prefecture, and died on December 5, 2014 (aged 84–85) in Lhasa, is a Tibetan of peasant origin, author of the autobiography, My fight for a modern Tibet, Life story of Tashi Tsering, where he describes the life he led successively in pre-communist Tibet, in exile in India and the United States, and finally back in China during the Cultural Revolution, between Tibet and Eastern China in the decades that followed.
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