Mountain View filmmakers tell story of imprisoned Tibetan Lama Mountain View filmmakers tell story of imprisoned Tibetan Lama (May 04, 2001)

"Tibet's Stolen Child" will be shown during Dalai Lama's visit

By Justin Scheck

Mountain View-based filmmakers Robin Garthwait and Dan Griffin have been making documentaries on international issues of social justice for nearly a decade. Their films have featured celebrities and international religious leaders, and have been shown in theaters, on television and at film festivals around the country.

But their latest documentary, "Tibet's Stolen Child," is their biggest and most ambitious project to date. It features six Nobel peace laureates, a missing religious leader, and three years and three continents worth of footage.

The film focuses on the story of the 11th Panchen Lama, an 11-year-old Tibetan Buddhist religious leader who has been detained by the Chinese government since he was identified as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama in 1995.

Griffin and Garthwait, a husband and wife team, wrote, produced, and directed the film, which uses the lama's story and the testimony of Nobel peace laureates to speak about the effects of religious oppression on people from a variety of countries and cultures.

"Tibet's Stolen Child" is Garthwait and Griffin's latest in a series of documentaries on Tibet and the issues surrounding the country's struggles as a Chinese occupied state. A worldwide odyssey

Between 1997 and the movie's completion in 2000, the two filmmakers traveled to India, South Africa and various locations in America to gather footage. It took nine months to edit all the footage, and the marketing effort for the film is still in full swing, with a U.S. tour and several bookings on national television in the works.

"It was a film that should have been done by 20 people, not, essentially, three," Griffin said.

It features interviews with six Nobel peace laureates -- the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Northern Ireland Parliamentarian John Hume, the political activist Mairead Maguire, the East Timorese leader Jose Ramos-Horta, and the Holocaust survivor, author and professor Elie Wiesel -- as well as Chinese dissident and former political prisoner Wei Jingsheng.

Griffin said the task of getting these interviews led the filmmakers on a series of trips around the world and unexpected events. Interviewing Desmond Tutu in South Africa involved a three-day wait for an appointment, along with an equipment explosion; a planned trip to Ireland to interview John Hume was made unnecessary when Garthwait and Griffin got a last-minute opportunity to interview him after a speech at Santa Clara University.

Both Garthwait, who was pregnant for much of the time, and Griffin said the process of making the movie was taxing.

"We were basically whipped when we finished this," said Griffin. But he said that the things he was able to capture on film made an incredible impact on him.

"One of the most moving things was when we were shooting in Delhi on March 10," said Griffin. "It was the 50th anniversary of the invasion (of Tibet by China). There were several thousand Tibetans marching through the streets. They were supported by the Indians, and there was just this intense emotion. As I was filming, there was an older Tibetan woman -- she's in the film -- who was crying, and I felt her before I saw her."

Griffin said these moments, as well as being able to hear the Nobel laureates speak in person, were inspiring.

The story behind "Tibet's Stolen Child" was set in motion by the mysterious death of the 10th Panchen Lama in 1988.

The Panchen Lama was historically regarded as the second-holiest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, with only the Dalai Lama above him in the religious hierarchy.

But when the Dalai Lama left Tibet in 1959, 10 years after the Chinese invasion, the 10th Panchen Lama, Lobsang Trinley Choekyi Gyaltsen, became the highest-ranking religious official in the country. A lama under surveillance

According to John Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, the 10th Panchen Lama was a controversial figure; he spent most of his life in Beijing, under the close watch of the Chinese government, and for a time he was considered a mouthpiece for it.

But during a rare visit to his home monastery in Tibet, shortly before his death at age 50, the Panchen Lama denounced the actions of the Chinese government in Tibet.

"It was a very odd kind of series of circumstances around his death... But there's never been hard evidence that he was poisoned or died an unnatural death," said Ackerly.

The Dalai Lama's exile in India prevented the search for the Panchen Lama's reincarnation from getting underway for nearly six years. Finally, in 1995, a group of high-level monks from the Panchen Lama's Tashi Lhunpo monastery, with the approval of the Chinese government, began a search for the new lama.

But the monks secretly kept the Dalai Lama informed of the search, and when the Dalai Lama identified six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the new Panchen Lama on May 14,1995, the Chinese government declared him illegitimate. By May 17 of that year he and his family had been taken into Chinese custody.

Later that year the Chinese government identified six-year-old Gyaltsen Norbu as the "real" Panchen Lama.

With only the basic facts of this story to go on, Garthwait said, she and Griffin "wanted to place Tibet in an international context, so it wasn't seen in isolation." They decided to feature the six Nobel peace laureates because they could speak about oppression and the struggle to end it.

"I wanted it to be very international in its scope, and I wanted people with a lot of moral authority to be talking about the issue," said Garthwait.

"The issue is really far away from us, and in a way has nothing to do with us," said Griffin. "But this situation has happened in other countries_ it's in Ireland, it's in East Timor_ and just because it's so far away, don't think it can't happen here... In a way, everyone is responsible."

But the filmmakers also said it was important to them to have leaders who have made progress in their work for peace.

"The real message of the Nobel laureates is that each has been in a hopeless position, odds stacked against them, and each has come out of that situation," said Griffin.

"We wanted to give people hope," said Garthwait. International recognition

The pair is still busy marketing the film, and in the past few months their efforts have begun to pay off. Earlier this month Garthwait won an award for best director at an independent film festival in New York; the movie has secured television spots in a number of major U.S. markets, and is set to begin a nationwide tour later this year.

Griffin said he and Garthwait decided to put off new projects for the next few months to devote their energy to marketing the film.

"It's basically self-funded, and there's so much sacrifice that you just have to do," said Griffin. "The phrase they use for documentary filmmaking is that it's easy to make a small fortune. You just need to start with a large fortune."

In Mountain View a short version of "Tibet's Stolen Child" will be shown before the Dalai Lama gives a speech during an appearance at Shoreline Amphitheatre May 19.

The full, hour-long version will be shown at East West Bookstore Saturday, May 12, at 8 p.m. Griffin will be on hand to speak about his experiences making the movie.

The movie will also show on KTEH Channel 54 on May 13 at 9 p.m., and on KQED Channel 9 on May 20 at 6 p.m.