Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion

Reviewer Philippa Hawker
October 28, 2004
Chinese soldiers on the march in <i>Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion</i>.

Chinese soldiers on the march in Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion.
Photo: Supplied

(M) Lumiere, Classic

The title has a touch of the National Geographic about it, and the film contains some images of striking mountain scenery, but Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion is a documentary with a broad political and historical thrust, and it begins with some grim and confronting footage.

Two young American travellers in Tibet recall their experience, in 1987, of coming across a demonstration calling for independence: it was brutally suppressed by Chinese soldiers, they say, and there is evidence on screen, a combination of stills, moving images and interviews with participants testifying to torture and brutality.

Tom Peosay's film then embarks on a dense, comprehensive account of Tibet - from its origins 1200 years ago as a military culture, through its transformation during a long period of isolation that ended in the 20th century, and above all, through the devastating story of its occupation by China.

It presents the history of Tibet's unique religious culture, the role of the Dalai Lama, the country's strategic position, and its contemporary dilemmas in a carefully constructed fashion - balancing positives and negatives, information and imagery, the particular and the general, ideals and practicalities, legends and current events, Western scholars and Tibetan voices, images of beauty and ritual and downbeat footage of young Tibetans, jobless, aimless and disenfranchised.

Although there is no doubt that the film is a strongly argued case against the Chinese occupation and its excesses, there is space for Chinese government representatives to have their say, as well as an attempt to give some sense of a Chinese point of view - on the different understanding that the two cultures had, for example, of the notion of "liberation".

Amid the stories of devastation and exile (and references to the self-interested, limited support or calculated indifference of the West), the film ends, perhaps surprisingly, on an almost optimistic note. In registering how much Tibetan culture has already lost in the repressive climate of occupation, it also suggests how much it still has to offer - to China, among others.

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