Independent Chinese PEN Center

By IAN JOHNSONAUG. 20, 2014

The documentary filmmaker Jocelyn Ford, left, and Zanta. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

BEIJING — When the Tibetan farmer Zanta’s husband died, she was forced by local custom to move in with her in-laws, who forbade her son to attend school. Instead, she packed up and moved to Beijing, where she was helped by a relative from another lifetime.

That is the beginning of “Nowhere to Call Home,” a documentary by a foreign correspondent in Beijing, Jocelyn Ford, showing at the Museum of Modern Art this month. The film follows Zanta (who, like many Tibetans, goes by one name) here and in her hometown, where she confronts her father-in-law. Along the way, it becomes clear that the relative from another lifetime is Ms. Ford, who breaks the traditional wall between journalist and subject by becoming a friend.

The film breaks down the sometimes romantic Shangri-La view that Westerners have of Tibet, showing it to be a place with many hidebound traditions, especially discrimination against women. It also offers a shocking portrait of the outright racism that Zanta and other Tibetans face in Chinese parts of the country. And it shows how many members of minorities lack even basic education: Zanta’s sisters are illiterate, unable to count their change in the market or recognize the numbers on a cellphone. But maybe most surprising is that Ms. Ford has been quietly showing the film in China itself, eliciting admiration and unease that such a penetrating film was made by a foreigner.
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