Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Relations between Tibet and China have been fraught for centuries. However, China’s 1950 invasion of Tibet, and its repression of an ensuing 1959 Tibetan uprising which resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing to India, marked a definitive turning point. Since that time, the migration of Han Chinese – China’s ethnic majority – and an influx of global tourism to the region has resulted in significant encroachments on and challenges to traditional Tibetan Buddhist culture.
Filmed in 2011, the US director Russell O Bush’s short documentary Vultures of Tibet offers a small window on to cultural tensions on the Tibetan Plateau. Set in the historically Buddhist town of Taktsang Lhamo, home to two monasteries, the film is centred on the practice of sky burials, in which the bodies of the Tibetan dead are fed to wild griffon vultures. For the town’s Tibetan Buddhist population, it is a sacred means of helping the dead’s spirit transition to the next life – a final earthly offering to creatures believed to have the wisdom of deities. However, for much of the rest of the world, the tradition is a morbid curiosity, and increasingly attracts unwelcome tourists, whose pictures end up in all corners of the internet. An accomplished work of contemporary anthropology, Bush’s film is a powerful examination of nature and culture, tradition and modernity, oppression and exploitation.
video
Design and fashion
Refined towards imperfection – a ceramic artist recreates a rare Korean treasure
15 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Through a poetic account of childhood trauma, one woman reclaims her past
28 minutes
video
Politics and government
‘Without a poster, you don’t exist!’ – on the curious political banners of Mumbai
20 minutes
video
Global history
The famed medieval map that stretched beyond Earth to heaven, history and myth
5 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
A biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse
6 minutes
video
Design and fashion
Household items are reborn in a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’
11 minutes
video
Music
As a pianist strikes a chord, visualisations of his notes appear in real time
5 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Meet the man who uncovered the scandal of nuclear testing in South Australia
13 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
Jeremy Bentham was consumed by creating a perfect prison. Here’s the result
4 minutes