Rituals of Resistance Screening + Q&A with Director, Tenzin Phuntsog
Monday, April 26, 2021 at 7:30 PM EST
THE FILM
Rituals of Resistance (2018, English, Tibetan, 63min)
Directed by Tenzin Phuntsog & Joy Dietrich
The film Rituals of Resistance is driven by the personal experiences of three Tibetan exiles, from three different generations, living outside of Tibet. Tenzin reflects on their different forms of resistance: his immigrant mother in California, who follows the Dalai Lama’s Middle Path of nonviolence and defies Chinese border restrictions to reunite with her family after 30 years of separation, a monk who becomes a guerrilla leader after the 1950 Chinese invasion (archival footage set in the mountains of Tibet featured in the film), and a student-activist in Dharmsala, India, who grew up under Chinese-controlled Tibet and turns to suicide protest.
Previous screenings: Margaret Mead Film Festival, Jacob Burns Film Center, The Rubin Museum of Art, Asian American International Film Festival, San Diego Asian American Film Festival PacArts
Viewer Advisement: The film contains violent footage of self-immolation that may be triggering.
FILM STREAMING
Saturday, April 24 @ 12 AM EST to Wednesday, April 28, 2021 @ 11:59 PM EST
Link will be emailed to RSVP list.
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Tenzin Phuntsog
Director, Cinematographer, Editor
Tenzin Phuntsog is an award winning filmmaker, and emerging artist. He was recognized as a Flaherty Fellow for his commitment to the art of the moving image. Rituals of Resistance a feature length film about three generations of resistance in exile won the Emerging Documentary Feature Award at the AAIFF42 Asian American International Film Festival in New York in 2019. His most recent contributions are in print in the latest Flaherty Seminar Catalogue: Action, published in collaboration with the Flaherty, Union Docs and World Records. His films have screened at BlackStar, Camden International, Margaret Mead, Video Brasil, Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery and the Eye Film Museum in the Netherlands. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Film at Montana State University. He earned his MFA at Columbia University in New York as a Moving Image Artist and Agnes Martin Fellow. BA in Media Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. Through a Film Foundation Fellowship, he studied Film Preservation at Cineteca Bologna, Italy. He was also Blue Mountain Center Artist in Residence. He has served as an advisor for the Prince Claus Funds in Amsterdam. He manages the Tibet Film Archive. He is currently working on several new projects including organizing Stateless.
Joy Dietrich
Director, Producer, Writer, Editor
A former staff editor at The New York Times, Joy Dietrich is a self-taught filmmaker who was born in Korea, grew up in America's heartland, and matured under the European social democratic system. Her films explore themes of adoption, identity, and cultural displacement. “Rituals of Resistance,” a collaboration with filmmaker Tenzin Phuntsog, is her first documentary feature.
DIRECTORS
NOTE FROM THE ORGANIZER
This event is part of the Third Cinema class in Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA program. Third Cinema is a theory and concept born in the revolutionary 60s and 70s of Latin America as an alternative to First Cinema (Hollywood) and Second Cinema (European art films). Since then it has lived on through filmmakers worldwide, who continue to fight systemic powers of oppression with moving images. We are excited to invite the CUNY community and beyond to experience and discuss a film that, we think, challenges Tibet’s issues today in the spirit of Third Cinema. For more political history of Tibet please watch this special video created in our Third Cinema class by Dena Kopolovich.
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Organizer: Chloé Lee (MFA candidate), Sponsoring Faculty: Reiko Tahara
We would like to thank the Film and Media Dept at Hunter College: Kelly Anderson (Chair), Andrew Lund (Director of MFA in Integrated Media Arts), David Pavlosky (Operations Manager & Internship Advisor), Natalie Conn (Program Coordinator for IMA), Peter Jackson (Chief Digital Media CLT & Production Coordinator), and Sha Sha Feng (Adjunct Assistant Professor & Sr. Web Development CLT). We also thank Tenzin Phuntsog and Joy Dietrich for making this moving film and the SAF Fund of Hunter Film Media Undergraduate Program for making this event possible.