The development of community video in Tibetan areas : a case study of the film class at Jigme Gyaltsen Vocational School for Ethnicities

Abstract

This study investigates the development of Community Video in Tibetan areas. Through my six-month fieldwork at the Jigme Gyaltsen Vocational School for Ethnicities in Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai and two years of online engagement with the Image and Video Technology Professional Program, I was able to acquire an in-depth understanding of the ongoing formulation of Community Media as a mediascape. Under the framework of Community Media as Rhizome (Carpentier, Lie & Servaes, 2007), this thesis seeks not to answer the question of whether the videos produced by Tibetan nomads and farmers neatly fit into the categories of ethnographic film, alternative video, ecocinema, indigenous media, or participatory video defined by scholars in respective realms. Rather, by becoming Rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) Community Media not only sustains its film-making practices actively engaging with multiple filmmaking traditions listed above and the national ecological modernity. By becoming Rhizome, Community Media will also still be able to maintain its identity as alternative and independent through establishing interconnection with the state, the market, and the civil society.