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Filming Tibetan dreams
But Sonam wanted to show that, in many ways, "Tibetans are no different from other people." For example, when the Chinese first came to Tibet, there was a very active armed resistance to Chinese rule, funded by the CIA. "I don't think there is any contradiction between being a Buddhist and taking up arms to defend your country," says Sonam, though he also adds that after the CIA withdrew funding, many of those fighters went back to religion as if "to atone for their sins in taking up violence."
His father Lhamo Tsering was a liaison between the CIA and the Tibetan resistance movement. The CIA trained a number of Tibetans in America in the 1950s and 60s, and then parachuted them back into Tibet. One of the storylines in the film comes from the tale of one of those resistance fighters who mysteriously disappeared about 15 years ago and has never been seen since.
Dreaming Lhasa does not just go back into history to dispel some of the popular myths that shroud the Tibetan story in a sort of eternal sepia glow. Sonam and Sarin wanted to deal with the story of actual Tibetans growing up in places like India and America while their parents dream of a country that is increasingly becoming as mythical as Atlantis.
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