Interview Primer
I heard about the film "Daughters of Wisdom" in an email about coming events at Riverspace Arts Center, here in Nyack, NY. My curiosity peaked. I did a Google on the director's name, and found her website. Emails followed, and an interview was born.
-CG
What was the spark for your interest in doing a film about a community of Tibetan nuns?
In 2000, I was co-directing a film about Buddhism in America with a friend of mine, and during that process, I met Lama Norlha Rinpoche , the abbot of Kagyu Thubten Chöling Monastery in Wappinger's Falls. That film never got finished, but I began to visit KTC now and again and developed a relationship with him. I was particularly taken with his activities in Tibet, and how dedicated he was to women's issues there, and how so many referred to him as the "Feminist Lama". Then one day in 2002 he just said to me, "The next time I go to Tibet, you should come and make a film about my people". An offer I couldn't refuse if ever there was one. Ultimately I chose to focus on the nuns because of all of his humanitarian activities in Tibet, I thought Kala Rongo is the most extraordinary, and would offer viewers something truly never-before-seen.
Where in Tibet is Kala Rongo located, and what was the journey like to get there?
Kala Rongo is in a place called Nangchen, in Kham, near the source of the Mekong River (It's now officially part of Quinghai Province on the Chinese map). Pretty much in the middle of nowhere. To get there, we took the long flight to Beijing, and then a 2-hour inland flight to Xining, where we stayed for several days, organizing ourselves and adjusting to the 7,000 ft. altitude (which would soon become child's play) and the time zone. From there, we took a very bumpy overland jeep journey to our next home base of Gyêgu (now known as Yushu), over a mostly-paved road, passing small one-block, one-story cinderblock 'towns' with general stores and billiard parlors, and sacred high mountain passes draped in prayer flags. The whole thing definitely felt like a Sergio Leone Western, and I kept expecting Clint Eastwood to overtake us on a horse. We were lucky because the previous group that went four years earlier had only about 20% paved road; we probably had 75% of road, so the ride only took about 17 hours instead of two days. We stayed in Gyêgu for two days, and then it was another four hour ride into the serious middle-of-nowhere mountains of Nangchen and Kala Rongo, which sits somewhere between 14-15,000 feet into the clouds.
How did your expectations of the environment square with the realities of what you experienced on the ground?
Before I left, I spoke with Lama Norlha Rinpoche's attendants and others who had previously traveled with him to get an idea of what to expect and what to pack for the unexpected. Having traveled in third world countries before, I wasn't daunted by the impending lack of electricity and running water, the limited diet, the 'bring whatever you need because you aren't going to get anything else' Girl Scout readiness. In this case, the hardest part was the altitude. Living for 8 weeks at 14-15,000 feet was definitely a challenge on a lot of levels, and a very humbling one. Becoming breathless after climbing 4 steps was confusing at first and aggravating after a while. Having to think about things like whether to use a tripod in a shot because it meant carrying it up a hill was an extra challenge to my usual 'prepare for unexpected situations by bringing all your equipment' approach to documentary filmmaking. That was definitely something I hadn't factored in to the planning but quickly became a main concern.
How were you received my the members of the community?
Well, traveling with Lama Norlha Rinpoche in Nangchen is kind of like traveling with the Pope. He's a very highly revered Rinpoche, so being part of his entourage in public was a revered place to be. People would appear out of nowhere, over hills and out of doorways to get close to him and receive his blessings. And when we arrived at the monastery, the nuns were friendly and welcoming and of course curious about us.
On the personal side, we quickly befriended the small group of nuns who were officially in charge of watching after our comforts - preparing our meals and our rooms, bringing basins of water for washing, etc., and it was just a group of women getting to know each other. On the filmmaking side, if we had not arrived with Norlha Rinpoche, this film would have been impossible. These women had no awareness of the world outside their community except for their encounters with the handful of westerners who have visited their monastery. They've never been interviewed for a camera, they've never had someone watching, and being interested, their everyday activities. And they've never seen television or movies or any media that would give them context for what we wanted to do. It was because we were with Rinpoche that they gave us the benefit of the doubt and let us into their world. Of course, I did not want in any way to take advantage of their lack of knowledge of the filmmaking process, so made sure to let them look through the camera, ask me questions, and participate in the experience as fully as possible. But just to give you an example of their perspective on us, though we clearly came from across the world from them, wore foreign close and spoke a foreign language, when it came time to ask us questions, one women on the yak farm asked us, "how many yaks does your family have?"
How do you think both you and the nuns were changed by the encounter?
Wow, that's a tough question because the answer is a little bit elusive, even three years later. I know I was changed a great deal. Again, I've traveled 'off the grid' before, but this time the perspective I got on my own life, my desires, my struggles, was so much more profound. Of course, when I talk about them, like now, they sound kind of trite - recognizing how caught up we get in the little things and make them bigger than they are, realizing how *lucky* we are to be able to turn on a faucet and get water but how stupid we are to waste so much of it, how ignorant we are to squander silence. And then of course, how fortunate I am to have been born a woman in the *West*, to have grown up in the *1970s* and to have unmitigated, self-responsible *choice*.
The nuns, well, I can't really speak for them as to what they got out of it. What I can say is what I hope they *didn't* get out of it. You know, no one ever asked these women before why they became nuns, how they do what they do, if they are happy with their choice. I'm pretty sure they'd never asked it of themselves either. So it definitely crossed my mind, though of course jokingly, that I'd walk away and they'd be fraught with a sort of Woody Allen-esque existential angst: "Am I happy? What does it mean to be happy? Could I be happier? I need to get out of here!"
But seriously, and most simply, I think what we all got out of it was deep friendship. And I miss them terribly.
Bari Pearlman is a Manhattan-based independent producer, director, and writer, specializing in quality documentaries for theatrical and television markets. Her feature documentary Daughters of Wisdom , about the women of Nangchen, Tibet, is currently playing internationally in film festivals. She is also in production on A Period Piece, about women's relationships to menstruation; and will produce director Lee Storey's upcoming feature documentary about Up With People.
Visit her website @ www.btgproductions.com
Now Age Interview