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A Female Perspective on the Production of Tibetan Anthropological Documentaries

Author: YU Mengting  余孟庭  Translator: WU Bo 吴波


Abstract

This article will discuss the issue of ‘female narrative’ ( 女性表述 ) in the production of Tibetan documentaries on the basis of the author’s experience in the Tibetan areas of the upper reaches of the Yalong River ( 雅砻江 ) over the past twenty years. As a female director, the author attempts to incorporate in a sociological sense the female perspective into the process of documentary production. The female narrative in the creation of documentary resides in three aspects: first, the female identity makes it easier for the author/ director to activate the local ‘feminine network’ when she tries to get to know and understand the people whom she is going to film; second, the author presents characters through emotional narratives, such as in her representative works Tibetan Dream ( 二十岁的夏天 ) and Dolma Tsring ( 藏医的故事 ); third, the question of the continuation of local culture is discussed from the perspectives of female characters and family narratives, revealing both in depth and scope the ways of traditional cultural inheritance.

Keywords: women, Tibetan areas, anthropology, documentary