A film
Travellers and Magicians — Khyentse Norbu, 2003.
Khyentse Norbu's 2003 feature is the first film shot entirely inside Bhutan, with a wholly Bhutanese cast, in Dzongkha. Two travellers wait for a bus on a road in the western valleys and a monk tells them an old story about another wanderer. The film moves between the two journeys; the landscape it crosses is the landscape the visitor will cross. It remains the principal contemporary Bhutanese film for visitors who want a sense of the country before they arrive.
Film · Khyentse Norbu (Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche) · 2003 · 1h 48m · Dzongkha (with English subtitles)
Why we picked it
If The Cup is the warm comedy, this is the contemplative companion piece. Travellers and Magicians is a road film that crosses the western Bhutanese landscape a visitor will themselves cross — the cantilever bridges, the road over the passes, the substantial silence between villages. The film teaches the eye what to look for. We recommend visitors watch it about a week before they arrive.
Editorial note
Khyentse Norbu (see [[dzongsar-jamyang-khyentse|the full entry]]) chose to shoot in Dzongkha with non-actors as a deliberate cultural-preservation gesture — at a moment when Bhutanese cinema barely existed as an industry, he made a film that was unambiguously Bhutanese rather than a Bhutan-set foreign production. The film's frame-story structure (a young man bound for America, a monk telling him an old Bhutanese folk tale about a magician) gives the visitor two registers at once: the contemporary tension between Bhutan and the wider world, and the older folkloric register that still inhabits the country. The film was released theatrically in the US and Europe in 2003-04. For visitors with serious cultural interest, it remains essential.
“Sometimes you travel without leaving home.”
— Lama (Sonam Lhamo), Travellers and Magicians (2003)
Where to find it
Bhutan / Prayer Flag Pictures (2003)
More from Khyentse Norbu (Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzongsar_Jamyang_Khyentse_Rinpoche
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