all site design, art work, photography and words are by me
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the realm of courage - a Delhi production company asked me to script a documentary about the
Dalai Lama
Part 1 - Tibet - approx. 3 mins
Fact screen 1
Against a black screen, the following quote appears in white letters. Silence
"When the iron bird flies and the horses run on wheels the Tibetan people will be scattered throughout the world
and the Dharma will come to the land of the red men."
Guru Rinpoche, 8th Century Buddha.
[Music Track 7]
Title screen, still white on black
Nyingtob Ling - The Realm of Courage
The following text (shown below in bold) should appear against the following collage of images - these should be of Hindu gods
and other traditional pictures that relate to the story (gods, the sea, mountains, etc.)
The drawings could be similar to the drawings the NL children produce (1:33:50), so that when we see them later, there is a
relationship between beginning of film and end.
Fact Screen 2
According to Hindu legend, a pair of seagulls once lived beside a great ocean. Each year, the ocean washed away the gulls'
precious eggs. Eventually, the god Vishnu, the Preserver of Life, took pity on them and swallowed the ocean - in its place, lay the
newly-created Mother Earth.
Fact Screen 3
Satisfied with what he had created, Vishnu slept, but the demon Hiranyanksha leapt on Mother Earth and raped her with such
monstrous force that her bones were shattered and thrown high into the clouds, thus forming the Himalayas, otherwise known as
"The Mountains of the Gods".
Use a collage of pictures/images of Himalayas/Tibet here, to emphasise its visual glory.
The following sentences can appear individually, alongside separate pictures as they appear on the screen.
Fact Screen 4
Tibet is the country in the heart of these mountains. The highest nation in the world. Shangri-la
"The Earthly Paradise".
Use photographs of Chinese Red Army soldiers marching, Tibetan people looking lost and alienated, hopefully with children in
view.
Fact Screen 5
In 1950, The Red Army invaded Tibet, claiming that it had always been part of the Chinese Empire. In freeing Tibet from itself, the
liberators have imprisoned, tortured and killed over 1,000,000 native Tibetans.
Fact Screen 6
Communist China claims Tibet was a feudal theocracy, its religious leaders exploiting the people with intolerable cruelty. So far,
over 100,000 Tibetans, many of them children, have suffered the arduous trek across the Himalayas into India and the safety of
exile from Chinese liberation.
Fact Screen 7
Here is the story of one such child...
Now, fade in to shots of the mountains around Dharamsala, especially the forbidding close-ups (1:03:00 for example). I leave the
exact choice of shot to you, but select something that suggests the severity of the landscape, hinting at the difficulty of crossing it
on foot. Then fade into the long distance shots of the valley, with those magnificent, menacing skies.
Here begins the narrative - a boy should be reading the following words, his accent Tibetan, but the pronunciation very clear. He
should speak slowly, with great wisdom and maturity, although the voice should sound no older than 10.
"I was born in a small village called Taktser, meaning "the roaring tiger". My mother gave birth to 16 children, but nine of them died
when they were very young. Of course, at that time nobody imagined that I was anything but an ordinary baby."
"When I was three years old, my parents took me to Kumbum Monastery where I was enthroned during a ceremony held at dawn.
The period after that was a lonely and rather unhappy phase in my childhood. My parents left, and I was alone in a totally
unfamiliar environment. It is very hard for a child to be separated from loved ones. I did not understand what it meant to be the
Dalai Lama, because I felt I was a boy like any other."
"The year I turned twenty one, something happened that made more unhappy than ever before. I never imagined that the Chinese
would send in planes to bomb Lithang Monastery, in the province of Kham. When I heard of this, I broke down in tears. I could not
believe that human beings were capable of such cruelty."
"At dawn on 17 March 1959, the end was imminent. As night fell, I went to the chapel of Mahakala, and walked around the
courtyard, stopping at the other end to visualise my arrival in India, then walking back to the doorway to symbolise my return to
Tibet. That is how my journey into exile begun."
Fade out
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