https://doi.org/10.31648/mkks.2963
There are three goals set before this article, elucidating on the profile of Tian Zhuangzhuang, a Chinese film director from the so-called Fifth Generation, comprising directors, who studied at the Beijing Film Academy between 1978 and 1982. In the first place, it brings to the fore a lesser known creator, while reviewing his oeuvre through the “ethnographic” aspect of both the minority film genre, as well as his semi-documentary style of filmmaking. Secondly, the major part of the text is an analysis of one of his most important works, namely, The Horse Thief (1986), touching upon multiple aspects of plot, pictoriality, and religion presented in the film. As it has been noted by the critics, The Horse Thief amounts to an intense experience of Otherness, upsetting audiences expecting cinematic “exoticism,” which presents alienness as already tamed. Instead, Zhuangzhuang’s film serves it to them in crudo. The final aspect concerns Tibetan culture, religious beliefs, traditions and customs portrayed at length in their “raw” form, without any commentary, as in observational cinema. This way, The Horse Thief can be seen as representative of the director’s approach, who takes on the role of a discoverer, or voyager, who surveys a terra incognita with an unprejudiced eye, while refusing to fall back upon a pre-established system of beliefs. His is a cinema of sensations that precedes rational thought and judgement.
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