LEH: ‘Shepherdess of the Glaciers’, a documentary film directed and produced by Stanzin Dorjai (Gya), with Christiane Mordelet has won the Grand Prize at the 2016 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival at Canada this week.
“Half way Around The World – the filmmakers’ ability to make an intimate and isolated existence “universal” is what makes this film at once moving and engaging,” says Elizabeth Yake, a member of the 2016 Banff Mountain Film Festival jury. “This expansive film absorbs the viewer into the conjoined, meditative world of a harsh environment – which includes the passing seasons, a barren mountainous landscape and the intimate relationship between humans and animals in their care,” she adds. “Capturing a moment in time – quietly observing a spirited individual eking out a basic existence with all of life’s necessities -the filmmaker uncovers a life that is organic – filled with struggles- but ultimately a life abundant with awe and joy,” observes Elizabeth Yake.
Living 5,000 metres above sea level with her 300 goats, Tsering is one of the last shepherdesses in the far northern mountains of Ladakh, India. As she leads her flock of 300 sheep and Pashmina goats to graze on the 5500 m high Himalayan Plateaus in a dry and desolate landscape, Tsering is under the continuous threat of wolves and snow leopards. Documented by her brother over four seasons, the film depicts both her world of icy loneliness and that unbreakable bond between humans and animals.
Jury members in 2016 included National Geographic Society’s Doug Bailey; Canadian born filmmaker, Ciaran Flannery; Vice Director of the Mountain Film Festival of Zakopane (Poland), Gabriella Kühn; Chamonix based UK mountain guide Victor Saunders, and Canadian producer Elizabeth Yake.
In June this year Shepherdess of the Glacier was selected as one of 9 films to compete in long version documentary completion of the 9th International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram. It was also screened at Dharamshala International Film Festival. The film, a moving story of Tsering, a shepherdess, who leads her flock of 300 sheep and Pashmina goats in search of fodder across the high Himalayan plateau of Ladakh, was earlier screened at Ladakh and also in Delhi and other places and has received appreciations from different parts of the country.
Stanzin Dorjai (Gya) is an award winning film maker from Ladakh and the founder of Himalayan Film House Leh.