RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Here's a combination practically designed to get a film banned in China - a documentary about a very touchy subject, Tibet, by an American filmmaker. Instead, the film called "Nowhere To Call Home" has been quietly making the rounds in China and winning praise. NPR's Frank Langfitt caught a screening this week in Shanghai and spoke with the director.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Tibet has long held a special place in the Western imagination. In the 1930s novel "Lost Horizon," a British diplomat crash-lands in Tibet's snow-covered mountains and discovers peaceful Buddhists who never age.
Here's a clip from a radio play of the novel.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO PLAY, "LOST HORIZON")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Shangri-la, it is a strange and incredible sight. A group of colored pavilions clinging to the mountainside like flower petals impaled upon a crag. It was superb and exquisite.
LANGFITT: The Tibet in "Nowhere To Call Home" is a much darker place illustrated by a poor, muddy village in southwest China's Sichuan province, where the movie's main character, a woman named Zanta, struggles against a brutal patriarchal system.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NOWHERE TO CALL HOME")
ZANTA: (As herself, speaking Mandarin).
LANGFITT: "We have an expression," Zanta says of her community, "women aren't worth a penny. Our men are ferocious. If a woman misspeaks, they belt her." Zanta's a widow. She's battling her father-in-law for custody of her son. Zanta moves to Beijing with the boy to seek a better life, only to face discrimination in the capital because she's Tibetan. Many Chinese see Tibetans as oafish and uncivilized.
In this scene, Zanta complains to police about a landlord who refuses to rent her an apartment.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NOWHERE TO CALL HOME")
ZANTA: (As herself, speaking Mandarin).
LANGFITT: "This is an insult to all Tibetans, I've lost faith," Zanta says.
"We are all Chinese," a cop responds. He's Han Chinese, China's dominant group.
"Chinese bullied Tibetans," Zanta replies.
JOCELYN FORD: When I started to make the film, I didn't think I had hope of high heaven of ever showing it in China.
LANGFITT: This is Jocelyn Ford. She's the movie's director and a former China correspondent for Public Radio's Marketplace. Ford met Zanta selling jewelry on the streets of Beijing nearly a decade ago and has followed her mostly ever since. She thinks Chinese can accept the movie because it's framed as a personal journey.
FORD: It is a family story. I don't use words like human rights, right? That's why - it's not politicized. The issues are the same as, I think, what many human rights groups are concerned about, but it's looked at from a human perspective that anyone can identify with.
LANGFITT: Of course, that approach meant leaving some things out, like the dozens of Tibetans from Zanta's province who self-immolated to protest Chinese rule. Tina, a Shanghai Ph.D. student who saw the film, said that that would've been too much.
TINA: I think people will feel uncomfortable about these elements because it's too radical, too political.
XIANG XING: My name is Xiang Xing. I'm a high school teacher.
LANGFITT: Xing showed the movie to her students in Beijing, who found it eye-opening.
XING: Before they saw the documentary, they never knew Tibetans' lives could be so hard in Beijing.
LANGFITT: Xing thinks the film could help improve relations between Chinese and Tibetans.
XING: Actually, we can do more like, we can be like, friendly and nicer to people like them. I hope more people can see the movie and that more Tibetan and Han and also other minorities can communicate.
LANGFITT: "Nowhere To Call Home" is available for rent on the website Vimeo. The next U.S. screening is at New York University in April.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai.