Tenzing Sonam

Tenzing Sonam during the shoot of Dreaming Lhasa

Tenzing Sonam (born 16 January 1959) is a Tibetan film director, writer and essayist. He works through his production company, White Crane Films, which he runs with his partner, Ritu Sarin.

Biography

Sonam was born in Darjeeling to Tibetan refugee parents. His father, Lhamo Tsering, who was born in the Kumbum area of Amdo (Chinese: Qinghai Province), served as Chief of Operations for the Tibetan resistance movement from the late 50s until the early 70s, and later, as a Minister in the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile. His mother, Tashi Dolma, was from a village near Lhasa in central Tibet.

Sonam studied at the Jesuit boarding school, St Joseph’s College, in Darjeeling. He did his undergraduate studies at St Stephens College, Delhi University. After a year each at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona and Santa Monica College in California, he went to the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism where he specialised in documentary filmmaking.

After his graduation from Delhi University in 1978, Sonam worked for a year in the Security Department of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala. He then worked as a dishwasher in Manhattan, a gardener in Scottsdale and a janitor in Berkeley. He was the manager of Del Rey Car Wash in Marina del Rey, California, for a year. After graduating from Berkeley, he worked for four years as Programming Director at the Meridian Trust in London, along with his partner Ritu Sarin. In 1991, he and Sarin founded White Crane Films. He has been an independent filmmaker ever since.

Writing

In addition to his role as a filmmaker, Sonam is an essayist and a writer. In 1979, along with the late writer, K. Dhondup, the scholar Tashi Tsering, Thupten Samphel, Kesang Tenzin and Gyalpo Tsering, he founded the pioneering English-language Tibetan poetry journal, Lotus Fields. He wrote the script for the feature film, Dreaming Lhasa. His writings have been published in Civil Lines, The Hindu, Time magazine, and Himal Southasian. His travel piece, A Stranger in My Native Land, was published in Written Forever: The Best Of Civil Lines. ^[1]

Personal life

Sonam and Sarin are married and have two children. In 1996, they moved to Dharamshala, the exile home of the 14th Dalai Lama and the epicentre of the Tibetan diaspora, to raise their children. They have been based there ever since.

Filmography

Sonam's first film was the student film, Mark Pauline: Mysteries of a Mechanical Mind (1984), which he co-directed with fellow Berkeley classmates, Steve Evans and John Sergeant. A portrait of maverick Bay Area artist Mark Pauline, the film won Third Place at the 1984 Student Emmys. Since then, all his film have been made in partnership with Ritu Sarin. These include:

See also

• White Crane Films

References