To Alexandra
SYNOPSIS：
Two travelogues intertwined.
A collage.
A correspondence.
Through text, researcher-writer Alexandra David-Néel’s journey across the Himalayas a century ago unfolds via her letters home—seeking answers in a world fractured by colonial history, wars, and human ferocity.
In audiovisual spaces, the filmmaker's experiences in eastern Tibet are reflected through her own lens and those of native Tibetan people. What begins through her encounter with a legendary school in the region becomes, by the film’s completion, an elegy — as violence overtakes “history” yet fails to erase memory.
Meandering between past and present, the film invites viewers into a meditative space where they contemplate life, death, history, the self, and more.
兩篇遊記彼此交織。
一幅拼貼。
一程通信。
在文字中，作家、學者亞歷珊卓·大衛-尼爾書寫她一個世紀前橫跨喜馬拉雅的心路歷程；
在視聽空間中，作者透過自己和在地拍攝者們的鏡頭思考在藏東果洛的經歷。
兩位書寫者，在不同媒介中，審視自己作為外來者的角色，咀嚼歷史留下的創傷和疑問，並凝視被雪域高原撫慰且顛覆的「自我」。
穿梭於歷史與當下，影像、聲音、文字將觀者帶入各自的冥想空間，靜觀天地、生命、死亡、自我、及更多未盡之思……
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Yi CuiDirector
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Tserang GhonProducer
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Project Title (Original Language):致亞歷珊卓
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Project Type:Documentary, Experimental
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Genres:experimental, non-fiction
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Runtime:1 hour 12 minutes
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Completion Date:June 15, 2025
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Country of Origin:China
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Country of Filming:United States, Canada, United States
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Language:Chinese, English, French, Tibetan
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Shooting Format:HD
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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No public screening at film festivals yet. Works-in-progress have been presented in 2025 at Pratt Institute in New York, Temple University in Philadelphia and at a private screening at Harvard University (https://www.revolutionsperminutefest.org/25RPM0102.html)
Yi Cui is a Chinese filmmaker who works between her homeland and North America. Her practice embraces a process-driven methodology, allowing her to explore the intersections of diverse cinematic forms. She has developed a body of work centred on the theme of 'Migrating Cinema,' delving into the connections between Indigenous cinema, auto-ethnography, traveling film projection, and ancient screen arts such as the shadow theatre.
Her work has received accolades, including the Grand Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the Libraries’ Award at Cinéma du Réel, the Best Short Film Award from the Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival. Several of Yi’s films have been screened at exhibitions and festivals worldwide, including the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Images Festival, Viennale International Film Festival, Short Film Week Regensburg, Message to Man, and Iran International Documentary Film Festival Cinéma Vérité, among others. Yi was a Flaherty Seminar Fellow in 2024. She currently teaches at Colgate University in New York state, USA.
Since 2013, Yi has been working with communities in Eastern Tibet, facilitating the creation of films by herdsmen, monks, and young students. Reflecting on her experiences living and working within these Tibetan communities, Yi created the experimental non-fiction film ‘To Alexandra,’ which represents a collaborative effort between herself and local Tibetan filmmakers.
崔誼，獨立影像作者。主要作品包括實驗短片《Shadow Puppet》、《秋》, 紀錄短片《觀》，紀錄長片《影》、《流影》等。作品曾獲德國奧伯豪森國際短片影展最高獎，法國真實影展館藏獎以及美國人類學會視覺人類學影像展最佳短片獎，併入圍鹿特丹國際影展、台灣國際紀錄片影展、維也納國際電影節、多倫多Images實驗影展等。現任教於美國柯爾蓋特大學藝術系。
自2013年，崔誼不斷深入青海果洛，幫助藏區的在地作者們用影像記錄家鄉的自然生境、日常生活、文化傳統和歷史變遷。這段經歷深刻影響了她的生活和創作。基於在藏東積累的素材與感受，崔誼與在地創作者們合作完成了實驗性非虛構長片《致亞歷珊卓》。
“Who was it written to? Who is it written to? Who will it be written to?”
“Can I write back? To whom would I be addressing? If the consciousness behind the letters exists, can we have a dialogue?”
These questions kept recurring to me as I read the letters by Alexandra David-Néel, a woman often celebrated as a pioneering European explorer of the Himalayas. Yet beyond her popular portrayal, the Alexandra I encountered in her writings was an earnest scholar, tireless in her quest for truths. Her travels through the Himalayas were never end goals, but paths naturally carved by her inquiries.
For ten years, I returned again and again to Eastern Tibet, to share with the local community the art of capturing the world through a camera. Yet people there have offered me far more than I gave them, not only through our interactions, but also through their lenses. Through their lenses, I learned how they perceive human and non-human worlds, how they talk to nature, how they dance through space, and how they face life and death. The audiovisual landscape created by the native filmmakers became integral to my own journey in the Himalayas.
More than a century stands between Alexandra’s journeys and mine. I am too humbled to compare my personal encounters to her legendary life. However, as I reflect on my time living and working in Eastern Tibet, Alexandra’s questions, conundrums, pains, joys, and moments of enlightenment … feel intimately close, as if we were on a shared path. Yes, she was writing to her loved one. But don’t these words, having endured a century, also speak to me—and to many others—here in this moment of history?
Like Alexandra, I question myself, as an outsider in the land of snows.
Like Alexandra, I grapple with my own role in a colonial history behind and in front of me.
Like Alexandra, I suffer the same sufferings, standing between the East and the West, solitude and relationship, the spiritual and the secular life …
Like Alexandra, I search for a way forward, even as history is shattered by plagues, wars, human ferocity, and greed.
Like Alexandra, my fragile ‘self’ has been soothed yet profoundly challenged by encounters on the Tibetan plateau.
We write through different media. We write to one another.
Would Alexandra find joy in hearing from us — a fellow traveler, and the Tibetan people she cherished?
「這些文字曾寫給誰？正寫給誰？將寫給誰」
「如果文字背後的意識仍存在，我能和她對話嗎？」
讀亞歷珊卓·大衛-尼爾時，這些問題不斷浮現。初聞這位傳奇女性是因為她的探險之旅。在她文字中我遭遇的卻不是一位探險家，而是一位尋求真諦的學者。喜馬拉雅的旅程只是她的追問留下的痕跡。
我無法將自己的見聞與百年前的探險傳奇相提並論。然而，當我回顧自己在藏東的生活、工作時，亞歷珊卓的疑問、困惑、痛苦、喜悅和頓悟……都如此近切，彷彿我們是彼此的旅伴。
在過去的十年里，我不斷回到藏東果洛，去「教授」那裡的人們如何用鏡頭講述生活。然而，收穫遠超出付出。藏地創作者們鏡頭裡的世界，成為我的旅程不可或缺的部分。透過牧人、僧侶和年輕學生們的視聽語言，我感受到一種不同的聲音與自然，與時空，與生死的對話。
亞歷珊卓是否曾聆聽相同的聲音？