Ausstellung: Shadow Circus

Exhibition: Shadow Circus

Forum Expanded Exhibition 2019

The exhibition Shadow Circus revisits an overlooked chapter in Tibet’s history: the armed struggle for freedom and its entanglement in global geopolitics through the CIA. Questions raised will touch upon collective intelligence, surveillance, decolonization, and the post-Cold War world. Filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam researched the subject for many years and made a BBC-commissioned documentary – The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet (1998) – that focused on the CIA’s support and betrayal of the Tibetan freedom fighters.
Shadow Circus re-evaluates the audiovisual material that they gathered over the years, and for the first time presents a re-edited version of their documentary, along with photographs, documents, letters, CIA surveillance maps of Tibet, and excerpts from interviews with former CIA agents and guerrilla operatives.

Shadow Circus is part of “Archive außer sich”, a project of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of “The New Alphabet”, a HKW project supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media due to a ruling of the German Bundestag. Shadow Circus is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin, Goethe-Institut New Delhi, and the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

by Tenzing Sonam, Ritu Sarin India 2016 Tibetan, English 50’ World premiere | Documentary form

Crew

Director	Tenzing Sonam, Ritu Sarin
Screenplay	Tenzing Sonam
Cinematography	Steve McCarthy, Ranjan Palit
Editing	Eliot McCaffrey
Sound Design	PM Satheesh
Producers	Harry Marshall, Ritu Sarin
Commissioned by	SAVVY Contemporary

Produced by

White Crane Films

http://whitecranefilms.com/ http://whitecranefilms.com/

Additional information

Curators: Natasha Ginwala, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Curatorial Assitant: Krisztina Hunya

Photos

Tenzing Sonam

Tenzing Sonam and Ritu Sarin have been working together since their student days in the San Francisco Bay Area. They lived in London for many years working as independent filmmakers, before returning to India in 1996. They are currently based in Dharamshala and Delhi. They have made several documentary films, features, and video installations, which have been shown at international film festivals and in exhibitions. Sarin and Sonam are the directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, one of India’s leading independent film festivals.

Filmography (Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam)

1985 The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City; 27 min. 1988 Films on His Holiness the Dalai Lama 1991 Footage From the Dalai Lama’s 1991 Visit to Buryatia, Aginski, and Kalmykia · The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche; 62 min. 1992 Tibet; 15 min. 1994 The Trials of Telo Rinpoche; 50 min. 1997 Fish Tales; 33 min. 1998 Footage from the Shadow Circus Shoot · A Stranger in My Native Land; 32 min. · The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet; 50 min. 1999 The Lhamo Tsering Photo Archive · Big Treasure Chest for Future Kids; 26 min. 2000 rights…& wrongs; video installation, 5 min. 2005 Dreaming Lhasa; 90 min. 2007 Some Questions on the Nature of Your Existence; 26 min. · The Thread of Karma; 50 min. 2008 Middle Way or Independence?; video installation · Footage From the Sun Behind the Clouds Shoot · Footage from Tibet: 1995, 2005 & 2008 2009 A Tibet of the Mind; video installation, 15 min. · The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom; 79 min. 2011 Mud Stone Slate Bamboo; video installation, 17 min. 2012 When Hari Got Married; 75 min. 2015 Taking Tiger Mountain By Storm; video installation, 5 min. · Burning Against the Dying of the Light; video installation 2017 Drapchi Elegy; 17 min. 2018 The Sweet Requiem; 91 min. 2019 Shadow Circus

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2019

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have been working together since their student days in the San Francisco Bay Area. They lived in London for many years working as independent filmmakers, before returning to India in 1996. They are currently based in Dharamshala and Delhi. They have made several documentary films, features, and video installations, which have been shown at international film festivals and in exhibitions. Sarin and Sonam are the directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, one of India’s leading independent film festivals.