Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen has been in prison awaiting trial for the past year and a half, due to 25 minutes of low-key though frank conversation with Tibetans about the Chinese.
Rare are tales of a lone individual challenging China's brutal censorship mechanism with a single act of bravery and determination. But that is the story of Dhondup Wangchen (see photo below). With the help of his friend, a Buddhist monk named Jigme Gyatso, also known as Golog Jigme, Wangchen has shown that limited means can be overcome to bring untold stories to global attention. In so doing, his plight has become a focal point for international Tibet-related publicity and activism at a time when, otherwise, related momentum had largely dissipated following the widespread protests of March-April 2008.
In the winter of 2007-08, the 35-year-old filmmaker and his friend travelled through remote areas of eastern Tibet. Under extremely harsh conditions, and with no previous camera experience, the two recorded the forthright views of more than 100 ordinary men and women in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games. At the end of the project, in March 2008, shortly after Wangchen managed to smuggle the recorded material to a cousin living abroad, the two were arrested – ironically, just as the mass demonstrations were about to begin in Tibet. Both have remained in detention ever since.
For more than a year and a half, Wangchen has languished in prison in the town of Xiling, in Qinghai Province, where he and Jigme are awaiting trial on charges of 'inciting separatism'. Wangchen's family members say he is in ill health, while a family-appointed legal representative has been denied access to the filmmaker. Even as its creators remain incarcerated, however, their work has taken on a life of its own. Despite China's determination to suppress critical voices before and during the Olympic Games of 8-24 August 2008, Wangchen's Jigdrel (the film has been released under the English title of Leaving Fear Behind) was shown to a small audience of foreign journalists on 6 August in Beijing. Since then, the documentary has been screened in more than 30 countries worldwide, and translated into five different languages, including Mandarin.