In the middle of tracking down remnants of traditional folk music in occupied Tibet, Ngawang Choephel---a Tibetan exile and musicologist---was arrested for spying. He ended up spending six and a half years in prison, an experience he documents in this intriguing, and at times too dispassionate, chronicle of injustice.
In the middle of tracking down remnants of traditional folk music in occupied Tibet, Ngawang Choephel---a Tibetan exile and musicologist---was arrested for spying. He ended up spending six and a half years in prison, an experience he documents in this intriguing, and at times too dispassionate, chronicle of injustice. Though the movie is a testimony to one man's will to survive and a testament to a vanishing art form, Tibet in Song's greatest achievement may be the way it shows how China recast traditional songs as modern pro-Communist propaganda---an eradication of an invaded country's culture through insidious co-option.