Participatory Video Education Project: Glacier
 2002/Color/DV/31min
Location: Mingyong Village, Deqin County, Yunnan
Filmmakers: Zhaxi Nima (Tibetan Poet/Paper Editing); Guo Jing (Editing)
Producer: Guo Jing
Organization: BAMA Mountain Culture Research Institute.
E-mail: azara55@yahoo.com.cn
Web: www.bamamount.org
Donor: The Ford Foundation Beijing Office
This film is a result of ‘Learn Our Own Traditions: a Participatory Video Education Project’, funded by the Ford Foundation. The project’s aim is to provide the Tibetan residents of the Diqing area with digital cameras to record their traditions and changes occuring in their community, and to use these videos to heighten villagers’ and school children’s awareness of their culture and community.
 Zhaxi Nima, the photographer of the film, is from Minyong Village, which is located at the foot of Mount Kawakarpo (Meili Snow Mountain) near the low-altitude, low-latitude Mingyong Glacier. Since 1997, Mount Kawakarpo has grown in popularity, turning the Mingyong Glacier into a Deqin County tourist hot spot. Although the coming and going of mountaineers, tourists and journalists has benefited the local population, it has also caused environmental problems and raised cultural issues. In response to this, Zhaxi Nima decided to pick up a digital camera and record the viewpoints of various stakeholders in the area: pilgrims, villagers, travel industry workers and a CCTV travelogue film crew interviewing locals. Among the multitude of voices, his own thoughts on the changes in his home ring out.
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