Khashem Gyal speaks the language of an ancient and evolving culture.
Like many young Tibetans, Gyal says he understands that speaking his native tongue of Amdo Tibetan has become increasingly rare. Gyal embraces this connection with the past, for it enables him to traverse a contentious gap between young Tibetans and a generation that, in certain areas of Tibet, has greatly faded from focus.
In his film “Valley of the Heroes,” Gyal explores the loss of the Tibetan language and culture in Hualong County, a region in northeastern Tibet. Though Hualong is located in Tibet’s Amdo region, more than half of the population is actually composed of Han Chinese, Turkic Muslims and Chinese Muslims. As more than 30 percent of Tibetans in Hualong cannot speak any Tibetan, Mandarin has emerged as the dominant spoken language. The film will be screened on campus Friday, with Gyal in attendance.
Gyal graduated as a Tibetan literature student from Qinghai Nationalities University. With his fellow university volunteers, Gyal spent the summers of 2009 and 2010 teaching Tibetan to the young students in Hualong. He said he decided to make “Valley of the Heroes,” which is the English translation of “Hualong,” after seeing local elders’ responses to his work.
“We talked to the older people and they cried when we were having conversation in Tibetan,” Gyal said. “Older people still want to keep the language, but there’s very little people in the younger generation that still understand the culture.”
Gyal spent four months shooting in Hualong starting in July 2011. He said because of his previous travels to Hualong, the villagers were very supportive of his film project.
Gyal said he chose to observe Hualong County because it is the ground of convergence not only between Tibetan and non-Tibetan speaking villagers, but also because it has a diverse ethnic population. He said the villagers play an important role in holding the Tibetan culture intact.
“There’s a scene in the film with a festival, where you can see that the villagers still practice very religious rituals in their daily life,” Gyal said.
Tashi Rabgey, research professor of international affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, hosted Gyal as the 2014 Social Innovation Fellow in her non-profit organization Machik. She said while contemporary Tibetan painters and poets are very active in Tibet, filmmaking has proven less common.
Rabgey said Gyal’s film’s focus on language loss overlaps with her area of study of Tibetan language policy and practice. She said there is a reason “Valley of the Heroes” is the only film made about the topic.
“Gyal was courageous in capturing this story as the issue of language use, like so many issues in Tibet, is highly politicized,” Rabgey said.
Geography graduate student Andrew Grant met Gyal while doing research in Xining in September 2013. As an organizer behind the screening of Gyal’s film on campus, Grant said the film aligns with the UCLA Asia Institute’s goal of promoting knowledge about many under-discussed Asian regions.
In his research of identity and urbanization of Western China, Grant found that underfunding is mostly a problem for rural education in China. Grant said he was most moved by the scenes in which Gyal and his fellow volunteers taught Tibetan to the local children.
“It was really striking for me watching the volunteer teachers trying to teach the language to the students,” Grant said. “They hardly have chairs or tables, the chalkboards are pretty rudimentary.”
Gyal has been attending screenings of his film in the United States, beginning in December 2013 at Columbia University. He has screened his film at campuses, including Harvard, Yale and George Washington University, as well as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Gyal said that a documentary, like all good works of art, enables people to understand more of the world than one might be able to simply through his or her own senses. He said he is proud to have learned and been inspired, and that he is excited to think about the path for storytelling in the future.
“As a filmmaker, I really want (viewers) to see not only about the whole content of the film, but the very tiny things, the elements of the film,” Gyal said. “The way I tell my story.”