Can Tibetan filmmakers speak more than ethnic identity? Re-imagining Tibetan New Wave beyond ethnicized reading

This article uses emerging discourses on the Tibetan New Wave as an opportunity to revisit the concept of shaoshu minzu dianying (ethnic minority cinema), a key term referring to Chinese films representing ethnic minority subjects. Nonetheless, by pointing out its porous and essentialist nature, the article cautions against what it terms an ‘ethnicized reading’ of Tibetan New Wave films. It is tempting to dwell on their authentic ventilation of Tibetan culture vis-à-vis old Tibetan films’ lack of it, and hence appreciate the artistic merit in this regard. Such reading is no less than treating ethnic minority filmmakers as the perpetual narrators of national allegories, burdening them with the necessary representation of ethnic experiences. Having problematized the ethnic minority cinema framework as exemplifying ethnicized reading, this article explains what is at stake when employing an ethnicized reading to study minority cultural productions and how the multifaceted motifs and genres of the Tibetan New Wave resist a totalizing ethnicized reading.