:: January/February 2005 Volume 4/Number 1

Media Reviews: Film

Reviewed by Bob Belinoff

Travellers and Magicians
www.zeitgeistfilms.com

What, you’ve probably been wondering, is going on with film making in Bhutan?

You can find out in January when this delightful film, the first feature ever from this tiny Buddhist kingdom nestled in the Himalayas, hits Los Angeles.

What you’ll learn is that you don’t have to be caught up in the film making nexus of a major metropolis to bring your vision to the big downtown screen. This is a film whose innocence shines in every frame. It just bounces along over hill and dale and we are helpless but to follow as Dondup, a government official in a remote mountain village turns in his rubber stamp and sets off to find fame and fortune as a grape picker in the U.S. He is accompanied by Tashi, a restless farm youth studying magic.

The result is a dreamy journey of seduction, intrigue, jealously, lust and murder. The back story to the production may be equally interesting. Notes from the producer tell us that a cast and crew of 108 (itself a magical number in yoga) – from Bhutan, Australia, India, Canada and the U.S. came together to work with Director Khyentse Norbu in his homeland.

Norbu is the writer/director of the widely acclaimed “The Cup.” In keeping with the customs of his country, many of the production decisions were made using mo, an ancient method of divination performed by specially skilled lamas. Principal cast, crew and even the first day of shooting, we’re told, was dictated by mo.

Aside from the magical story this film also delivers a wonderful portrait of the country that was the inspiration for the Shangri-La of James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon. The country and its people have remained pretty much isolated and delightfully unspoiled for hundreds of years.
“I make films because I love films,” says Norbu, ”the whole concept, framing, pacing, sound, dialogue, everything.” And it shows.

Travellers & Magicians opens January 28, 2005 at the NuArt Theatre in West L.A.
—Bob Belinoff

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