Educational Media Reviews Online

This DVD contains, in addition to two trailers and two short extra scenes, two hour-long programs, both broadcast on some PBS stations. The earlier, and better, is Journey Inside Tibet, the chronicle of a Tibetan visit jazz/New Age flutist Paul Horn made in 1998, accompanied by Tibetan-American Lama Tenzin. Horn wanted to be the first Westerner to play and record his flutes in the Potala Palace and other significant Buddhist landmarks in Tibet - as he has done in many other famous places, beginning in 1968 with the Taj Mahal - and Lama Tenzin sought reunion with the family he had left behind 40 years earlier. Both achieved their goals and the filmmakers created an engaging memento of their experiences, narrated by Kris Kristofferson. If your library needs a DVD version of this film, originally released on both video and DVD by Dancing Dolphin Press in Hawaii, Lama Tenzin’s adopted home state, you may need to buy this “twofer,” from Jenson, even though the sequel for which the set is named is comparatively weak.

Mount Kailash: Return to Tibet is narrated by Horn himself, often as he experiences the journey rather than from a written script, though when that is in evidence it is more admonishing than enlightening. Neither the script nor Horn’s own narrative exhibits one shred of humor so in contrast to the good spirits of the Buddhist debaters shown in Journey to Tibet, no Westerners involved in the making of this sequel appear to have learned from that particular example, however deeply they claim to feel the religious spirituality of the place.

Traveling back to Tibet three years later, the musician’s quest was to encircle the sacred Mount Kailash and join in the ceremonial release of the ashes of Lama Tenzin, who had died earlier that year. Horn is not verbally gifted, and viewers interested in Tibetan sights and sounds may be irritated by the amount of time the sound track devotes to Horn’s rather simplistic responses to Tibet: “This is a hard life, but an honest life,” “We [in ‘McWorld,’ he implies] have come so far away from what is natural, and we call this progress,” etc. The trek to the mountain is filled with opportunities to overcome obstacles and the party was able to witness and film “Saga Dawa” – a full moon festival involving raising a gigantic flagpole festooned with colorful prayer flags that takes place annually near the base of Mount Kailash and is becoming a tourist attraction.

The path around the mountain is 32 miles long, requiring climbing to 18,600 feet. We are told that some Asian religions teach that making this pilgrimage releases one from sins for at least one lifetime, for Mount Kailash is the spiritual center of the universe. However desolate the countryside and rocky paths, traveling with yaks wearing brightly colored harnesses, coming suddenly upon bright sets of prayer flags strung on ropes, and catching spectacular views of Mount Kailash make the trip visually memorable. As a travelogue of Horn’s return to an exotic place this effort is rather long, but not without its charms. However, as a classroom supplement it has little educational value since Horn and his entourage are basically tourists in a land essentially strange to them, not well-schooled interpreters or informed scholars. A sober-sided 8-minute documentary about how the music was recorded for the film follows the main presentation. The film music was taken from Paul Horn and Christopher Hedge’s CD “Kailash.” This music combined sounds recorded in Tibet with subsequent studio recordings, all processed for artistic effect thus not useful except in snatches as a document of any culture but American New Age, however entertaining it may be. The sound quality of this film is excellent, as it was recorded in Dolby 5.1 stereo surround sound.

Awards:

• Bronze Award at the WorldFest Flagstaff International Film Festival,
• Documentary Award Category 1st Place: Always Independent Film Festival (alwaysif.com)
• 2nd Place: Silver Award Worldfest Houston
• Award of Excellence to Dr. Tom Vendetti, Videographer and Director, Videographer Awards 2000