Pema Tseden, a Tibetan director, and a bilingual Tibetan-Chinese writer from the Amdo Tibet region in Qinghai, debuted in 2005. His works have been highly regarded and frequently selected for international film festivals, earning him accolades as a prominent figure in the ‘Tibetan New Wave’ movement within Tibetan cinema. Different from the 'minority nationalities films’ where Tibetans are always being gazed at, all the films he has produced have been centred around Tibetan themes, with Tibetan as the primary language. Balloon is Pema’s seventh feature film, adapted from his eponymous short story. In contrast to his previous works like The Silent Holy Stones (2005), Old Dog (2011), and Tharlo (2015), which depicted the bewildering helplessness of male characters facing modernity, Balloon focuses a female as the main character for the first time. The collision between modernity and tradition manifested in the economic pressure brought by fines for violating the family planning. Meanwhile, religion, as an eternal theme, together with the former, constitutes the life dilemma of Drolkar, the protagonist. The power of religion exists in this film in the form of reincarnation, influencing every Tibetan both on and off the screen – Pema himself was identified by his grandfather as the reincarnation of his uncle. The filmmaker does not simply use a binary of backwardness and civilization to evaluate the influence of Buddhism, and this is one thing that sets him apart from the Han Chinese directors. Although the Tibetan Buddhist concept of reincarnation is the main source of conflict in this film, at the end, the main refuge Drolkar could imagine is still religion. It is clearly not easy for Drolkar to try to make a real break with the inherited notions. Here, in opting for an open ending, Pema embraces the idea of free will: although challenging, it offers the potential for true liberation for Drolkar.
TIAN Ruifan (University College London)
This is a story of a pastoralist family in Qinghai-Tibet plateau, where Drolkar lives with her husband, three sons, and father-in-law. The exact time the story takes place is vague – an intentional arrangement by the director. What is certain, however, the story is set in a period when family planning policies were strictly implemented. enforced. At the time, Tibetan families were not required to obey the one-child policy as Han Chinese families were, but they faced the issue of being punished if they had more than three children. This is why Drolkar did not wish to keep the baby when she had an unplanned pregnancy. However, after a revered local Buddhist leader prophesied that Dargye's father, who died suddenly, would be reincarnated within their own family, all of her family members, including her sister, who is a nun, all insisted that she should keep the baby. Her husband, Dargye, even slapped her when she showed disbelief in the prophecy. Pema’s films always have an open ending. In Balloon, Drolkar goes to the monastery with her sister for a short stay at the end, leaving her abortion decision and return uncertain.
TIAN Ruifan (University College London)
Pema powerfully portrays the plot staging, camera work, and soundtrack of the grandfather's funeral. With music and chanting in the background, the setting by Qinghai Lake, a sacred lake for Tibetans – the lighting at the magical moments of day and night, and the reflections on the water – all combine to create a surreal illusion in the Lensbaby lens, creating a dream-like effect with a fairly sharp area of focus and blurred surroundings. The camera moves slowly from left to right as it pans down to the puddle in the foreground, a figure is seen through a gap in the puddle. As the camera continues to move, a bent old man holding a prayer wheel – a prop representing a Buddhist element – gradually appears. The camera follows slowly as the reflection fades away, and then pans up to reveal the oldest grandson of the deceased and a horse. This exquisite long shot creates two spaces, the upper and the lower, the space of reality and the space of the deceased.
Pema simultaneously employs surrealist approaches to divulge the emptiness of religion. During a family conversation, the identification of Jamyang, the eldest son, as the reincarnation of his grandmother by a guru was mentioned again. Coincidentally, both he and his grandmother had a black mole on the same spot on their backs. After the conversation, Jamyang enters a surreal space in his sleep. Here, a soundtrack with Buddhist elements plays – a means for Pema to separate the real from the surreal in this film. In a light that is much brighter than the overall tone of the film, firstly, there is a close-up of a small hand effortlessly removing the mole from his back, then a hand-held camera continues to pan out as his little brother holds up the mole and happily running into a bright desert space. Clothed Jamyang chases his two nude little siblings and stops in the dunes in the end. Finally, the camera moves from left to right and at the end of the desert is a large expanse of shiny water. This long shot contains an important message that the director wants to convey: the heavy, pervasive, and suffocating religious beliefs are at one point really nothing more than a black mole that can be easily removed.
TIAN Ruifan (University College London)
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Pema Tseden 万玛才旦 (2020a) Interviewed by Suo Yabin 索亚斌, ‘“Qiqiu” yixiang, gushi yu kunjing: Wanma Caidan fangtan’《气球》：意象、故事与困境——万玛才旦访谈 (Topos, Story and Dilemma: An Interview with Pema Tseden about Balloon), Film Art, 395(6), pp. 88–93. Available at: https://cinephilia.net/77994/
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Robin, F. (2020) ‘Women in Pema Tseden’s films: a so far uneasy relationship A brief overview’, Available at: https://www.asianart.com/articles/robin/index.html
