The Guardian - London - 2 June 1997

There's nothing like a moral crusade to pep up Hollywood's jaded palate and Tibet offers exoticism too. Ed Douglas on the movies favourite location Long ago, in a land far, far away, a gentle people who believed in the spiritual force that joins us with everything else in the universe was over-run by an evil empire that believed in nothing beyond the material and tried to crush all dissent.

Many of them fled with their spiritual leader across high mountain passes and frozen wastes to live in exile. From there, they appealed to all nations for their freedom and preached compassion and forgiveness for their enemies. In a fractured and shallow age, this attracted an awful lot of Californians but drew little support from world leaders more worried about winning con-tracts to build the evil empire's new aeroplanes and broadcast their satellite television.

Reducing Tibet's recent history to a brief plot outline may seem trite, but for a generation of Hollywood film producers brought up on Star Wars, the easy cliches of a lost Shangri-La and its Yoda-like guru mixed with the easy chic of Buddhism are an irresistible combination. And, because Hollywood always needs a villain, China's occupation of Tibet has also helped fill the vacuum left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union There are currently at least seven films about Tibet either finished or in production as well as numerous documentary and music projects all of varying consequence.

First out of the blocks and the most worthy effort is Martin Scorsese's Kundun - a term of respect which translates as "presence" - is currently in post-production. It tells the story of the current Dalai Lama's early life, up to the moment of his departure for exile in India following the Chinese invasion - called a peaceful liberation" by Mao Zedong - in 1950 and an uprising by the Tibetan people in 1959. Apart from Scorsese, the only other big Hollywood name involved is Harrison Ford's wife, scriptwriter Melissa Mathison. Along with a cast of Tibetan refugees, the Dalai Lama's younger sister Jetsun Pema plays their mother.

Seven Years In Tibet, which is released in October in the US, tells the story of the charismatic Austrian explorer Heinrich Harrer, who last week admitted to being a member of the SS, following his first ascent of the north face of the Eiger in 1938. Harrer was captured by the British at the outbreak of the second world war during a climbing expedition to Nanga Parbat and imprisoned in Kashmir. He escaped and made his way to Tibet and after a long and difficult journey across the inhospitable Chang Tang of northern Tibet he arrived in Lhasa, where he eventually became a tutor to the young Dalai Lama until the Chinese invasion. Costing $50 million, the movie stars Brad Pitt and was directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, whose previous work includes The Name Of The Rose. The Dalai Lama's niece and daughter of Jetsun Pema is taking the same role in this film as her mother is in Kundun, which left her in the curious position of portraying her grandmother being pregnant with her mother.

Other projects in the pipeline include Dixie Cups, a vehicle for actor-producer and Tibet obsessive Steven Seagal, who plays a CIA agent working with Tibetan rebels in the 1960s. Seagal has based his movie on the heroic but doomed struggle of the Tibetan resistance group which fought against the Chinese occupation from bases in Mustang in Nepal. Trained by the CIA at secret bases in Colorado during the late 1950s, the force - called Chushi Gangdruk or Four Rivers, Six Ranges, after their home province of Kham in eastern Tibet - fought communist China throughout the 1960s until the CIA abruptly with-drew its support: Henry Kissinger flew to Beijing in July 1971 to begin a new and more profitable relation-ship with Mao. In 1974, under pressure from the Chinese, the Nepalese army sealed off Mustang and the Dalai Lama broadcast an appeal for the fighters to lay down their arms. Rather than face; defeat, many of them committed suicide. Merchant Ivory, better known for languid period dramas such as A Room With A V

iew, has bought a script about two Americans who were in Lhasa during the desperate uprising of 1987, which was ruthlessly sup-pressed by the Chinese and ended a brief period of relative freedom begun after Mao's death. And Superman producer Ilya Salkind is said to be planning a movie about a liaison between an anthropologist and a yeti which, if it is true to the legend, will be messy and short.

It doesn't end there. Hollywood is full to the gunnels with big names falling over themselves to schmooze with the Dalai Lama and climb aboard the Free Tibet bandwagon Best known is Richard Gere, who made such an impassioned appeal for the Tibetan people at the 1993 Oscars ceremony that he hasn't been asked back again. But the list also includes such disparate talents as Harrison Ford, Oliver Stone, Bjork and Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, whose Milarepa Fund, named after the 11th century Tibetan poet and mystic, organises benefits for the Tibetan cause..

The problem with these Western attempts to portray significant periods of Tibetan history is that nearly all, with the exception of Kundun, approach the subject through the eyes of outsiders, illustrating perhaps that Hollywood is more interested in the stand it's taking rather than the future of Tibet itself; "The films will offer some support for the Tibetans historical claim to independence," says Robbie Barnett of the Tibet Information Network, "but apart from one or two characters there is a risk that films of this kind will cast Tibetans as sweet, cuddly toys who we can make decisions for."

Barnett, who was in Lhasa during the riots of 1987 and helped organise medical relief for its victims, argues that their portrayal of Tibetans is anachronistic. The films will create emotional support but that is of little use politically because it includes the implication that Tibetans arc victims, not political agents. They emphasise the Dalai Lama's religious qualities and how much the Tibetans have suffered, but they are unlikely to do good in terms of empowering Tibetans and conveying their seriousness, modernity and effectiveness."

Alison Reynolds, director of the Free Tibet campaign in London, says she hopes the films will have a serious underlying message" but added: "We welcome any attention that will raise awareness." This glitzy attention has not impressed the current regime in Lhasa, for although most of the films do not deal directly with Chinese atrocities during the occupation, they illustrate that Tibet was once an independent and peaceful country -which contradicts China's claim to sovereignty. In their best traditions, the Chinese have responded with an intense counter-propaganda campaign and threatened economic sanctions. Last November; Beijing warned Disney, the financial backers for Kundun, the Disney's plans for theme parks and films in China would be leopardised if Kundun went ahead. Under pressure to support freedom ahead of profits, Disney refused to back down and called China's bluff.

Hollywood's liberal elite, rarely out of the saddle when it comes to high horses, sent a letter to a sympathetic President Clinton denouncing China's attempt to impose worldwide censorship on any artistic production that does not meet with official approval" So tar the Chinese authorities have not acted against Disney and campaigners are delighted with Mickey Mouse ethical stand. "Disney's policy of sticking to principles over trade is a rare and deeply gratifying move and has made Tibetans all over the world extremely happy;" said Tempa Tsering, secretary of the Department of information and International Relations. Or as Richard Gere so elegantly said: "It's a bad precedent to be dictated to by a dictatorship."

Seven Years In Tibet also came under pressure. After spending $1 million hunting for a suitable location in northern India, the film's producers were refused permission to work there when the Indian government allegedly came under pressure from the Chinese. Annaud took his crew to Argentina instead, building a replica of 1940s Lhasa on the pampas and flying in yaks from an eccentric breeder in Montana who offered him the beasts for nothing if the Frenchman promised to cast Demi Moore. (Annaud refused; the yaks cost $3,600 each.) Scorsese was forced to shoot in Morocco and all the stars of both films have been banned from ever visiting Tibet.

China's response has been even more heavy-handed with Tibetan film-makers.

Ngawang Choephel, a Fullbright scholar who went into exile with his mother at the age of two and recently returned to his native land to make a documentary about traditional Tibetan song and dance, had been reported missing for months until the Chinese admitted they were holding him. He was recently sentenced by the communist authorities in Lhasa to 18 years in prison for "conspiracy to spy after they claimed he "confessed" to the crime

Beijing is also using the onslaught of less than positive attention. Red River Valley is set during the British invasion of Tibet led by Francis Younghusband in 1904. This ill judged campaign, aimed at countering an illusory threat from imperial Russia, ultimately persuaded Beijing to believe it must control Tibet. After bringing in bus-loads of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, Red River's director Feng Xiao Ning is reported to have recreated the destruction of the temple at Nenying when British troops massacred monks until, according to Tibetan accounts, the floor of the shrine was "a lake of blood".

China has also released a 12-episode series which claims to portray how "real Tibetans are living as well as a television documentary about the reincarnation of lamas, including the Panchen Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's second-most important leader. The film is flirther justification for one of China's more outrageous attempts to reduce the influence of the Dalai Lama in Tibet. In May 1995 the Dalai Lama had recognised the six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnation of the previous Panchen Lama, who had died in suspicious circumstances in 1989 at the monastery of Shigatse. The Chinese refused to accept Dalai Lama's choice and replaced him with their own choice and detained the original Gedhun's current whereabout are unknown.

This hijacking of Tibet's spiritual hierarchy has implications for the future The Dalai Lama himself is now in his sixties and when t time comes to select his replacement the Tibetan government in exile at Dharamsala in northern India fear that the Chinese will intervene again to secure nominal control of Tibetan Buddhism There is an increasing urgency to persuade the Chinese to negotiate over the future of Tibet before the foundations of the once independent state are further eroded. Some may feel that the current Dalai Lama is getting too close the self-important world of Hollywood, but in the absence of action governments, he and his people need all the help he can get.