Tenzing Sonam


Tenzing Sonam is a Tibetan film director, writer and essayist. He works through his production company, White Crane Films, which he runs with his partner, Ritu Sarin.

Biography

Sonam was born in Darjeeling to Tibetan refugee parents. His father, Lhamo Tsering, who was born in the Kumbum area of Amdo, 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 his graduation 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. He has been an independent filmmaker ever since.

Films

Sonam's first film was the student film, Mark Pauline: Mysteries of a Mechanical Mind, 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, 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.

Writing

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 Firlds, Fresh Winds. He wrote the scripts for the feature films, Dreaming Lhasa and The Sweet Requiem. His writings have been published in 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.

Other Activities

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. 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.

Filmography

YearFilm
1985The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City
1991The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche
1992Tibet
1993The Trials of Telo Rinpoche
1997Fish Tales
1997A Stranger in My Native Land
1998The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet
1999Big Treasure Chest for Future Children: Tibet
2005Dreaming Lhasa
2007The Thread of Karma
2007Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence
2009The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle For Freedom
2012When Hari Got Married
2018The Sweet Requiem

Art Projects

YearWorkCommissioned byExhibitions
2000rights... & wrongs Tibet MuseumTibet Museum; Contour Biennale 8
2007Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence TBA-21TBA-21; Mori Art Museum; Busan Biennale 2010; Ravenna Festival
2008Middle Way or Independence? TBA-21TBA-21
2009A Tibet of the Mind White Crane FilmsArt Centre Silkeborg, Denmark
2011Mud Stone Slate Bamboo White Crane FilmsEngadin Art Talks, Zuoz, Switzerland; Landings: Extracted Bodies and Self-Cartographies, StudiumGeneraleRietveldAcademie, Amsterdam
2015/17Burning Against the Dying of the Lights White Crane FilmsKhoj Studios, New Delhi; Contour Biennale 8
2015Taking Tiger Mountain by Storm White Crane FilmsKhoj Studios, New Delhi; Contour Biennale 8
2017Drapchi Elegy Contour Biennale 8Contour Biennale 8; Kunsthalle Vienna; Marabouparken, Stockholm
2018Chronicle of an Arrest Foretold Artspace SydneyInstagram Action
2019Shadow Circus White Crane Films/Savvy ContemporaryBerlinale Forum Expanded 2019