Private Project

To Alexandra

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SYNOPSIS：

Two travelogues intertwined.

A collage.

A correspondence.

Through text, the journey of the researcher-writer Alexandra David-Néel across the Himalayas a century ago is narrated via her letters home.

In audiovisual spaces, the filmmaker's experiences in eastern Tibet are contemplated through her own lenses and those of the native Tibetan people.

The two authors, writing in different media, are both challenged by their own roles as outsiders, and by the colonial history behind and in front of them. Standing between the East and the West, they ask: where is the path forward from a history shattered by plagues, wars, and human ferocity. They look into the “Self”, which has been soothed yet profoundly challenged by their encounters on the Tibetan plateau.

  • Yi Cui
    Director
  • Tserang Ghon
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    致亞歷珊卓
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 12 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    July 15, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    China
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada, United States
  • Language:
    Chinese, English, French, Tibetan
  • Shooting Format:
    HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • No public screenings yet
Director Biography - Yi Cui

Cui, Yi is a Chinese filmmaker who works between her home country and North America. Her approach to creating films employs a process-driven methodology, allowing her to explore the intersections among diverse cinematic forms. She has created a series of works centered around the theme of 'Migrating Cinema,' delving into the connections between traveling film projection, Indigenous cinema, auto-ethnography, and ancient screen arts like the shadow theatre.

Her work has received accolades including the Grande Price at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the Libraries’ Award at Cinéma du Réel, the Best Short Film Award from the American Anthropological Association’s Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival. Several of Yi’s films have been screened at exhibitions and festivals worldwide, including 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.

In recent years, Yi has been actively engaged within the communities of Eastern Tibet, facilitating herdsmen, monks, and young students in creating their own films. Based on her reflections on the experiences of living and working within the local Tibetan communities, Yi created the experimental documentary "To Alexandra," which represents a collaborative effort between herself and native filmmakers.

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Director Statement

“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 somewhere, can I have a dialogue with it?”

These questions kept recurring to me as I read the letters by Alexandra David-Néel, a woman often celebrated as one of the pioneering European explorers of the Himalayas. Different from the popular portrayal of her, the Alexandra I discovered in her writings was an earnest scholar, who never ceased her quest for truths. Her Himalaya journeys were never the end goal, but the natural paths carved by her inquiries.

More than a hundred years stand between Alexandra’s journeys and mine own. I would feel too humbled to compare my personal encounters to her legendary stories. However, while contemplating 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 journey. Yes, she was writing to her loved one. But don’t these words, having endured the passage of a century, also speak to me, and numerous others, in this very 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 find myself asking, where is the path forward, while history is being shattered by plagues, wars, the human ferocity, and greed.

Like Alexandra, my fragile ‘self’ has been soothed yet profoundly challenged by my encounters on the Tibetan plateau.

I went to Eastern Tibet to “teach” people the art of capturing the world with a camera. Yet they 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 the 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 an integral part of my own Himalayan journey.

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 that she cherished?