Several internet users, filmmakers and journalists in Bhutan have recently been using the same hashtag on social media: “#FreeHemaHema”.
The hasthag refers not to a person but a movie that has been banned by the country’s censor board, known as Bhutan Infocom and Media Authority on the ground that it offends religious sentiments. Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait, directed by Tibetan lama and writer Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, is the first movie to be prohibited by BICMA. Rinpoche is better known across the world as Khyentse Norbu, the director of the critically lauded football-themed The Cup (1999) and Vara: A Blessing.
Set in the remote Pemathang village in southeastern Bhutan, Hema Hema is based on a fictitious ritual in which mask-wearing men and women spent 15 days in a forest in complete anonymity. It is the motif of masks that has upset BICMA as well as the National Film Review Board and the Ministry of Home’s Culture Department. Although religious masks are an integral part of Bhutanese tradition, they are normally used only during special rituals and festivals. The government also disapproves of the fact that Hema Hema was screened at numerous film festivals without BICMA paperwork in place.
Norbu’s reputation as a filmmaker ensured a premiere for Hema Hema at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in 2016, after which the movie travelled to Toronto, London, Busan, Taipei, Hong Kong and Mumbai. The legal section under which Hema Hema has been proscribed – Section 105 (1) of the BICMA Act – applies only to domestic distribution, pointed out the movie’s producer, Powa Choying Dorji. A film may be banned in Bhutan only if it violates national security, sovereignty or freedom, incites violence, discloses national secrets or disrupts foreign relations.
“We have not even slightly infringed on any of these norms, and furthermore BICMA has not even listed any of these violations against us, and yet we have been banned from screening,” Dorji said. “There are no specific laws in Bhutan that forbid the use of masks in film or the other arts. Religious masks have long been used for entertainment purposes at official government banquets, receptions and other functions.”
Officials of BICMA refused comment.
Dorji has filed an appeal against the ban, which doesn’t only affect Norbu but also young Bhutanese directors whose independently produced films are regularly sent out to film festivals. “BICMA and the authorities have sent out a clear message that there are boundaries to our creativity, and to our dreams,” Dorji said.
Hema Hema was probably the most challenging of Norbu’s films. “We have put together a team comprising young, inexperienced amateurs keen to learn and create,” Dorji said. “The director wanted to go out of his way to find Bhutanese youngsters who were substance abusers but were artistically inclined, in an effort to try and use creativity as a means to break the addiction. It was the director’s vision to have the Bhutanese youth make something artistically that could not only tell a Bhutanese story, but would directly benefit the community.”
The Bhutanese government decision has also been slammed on social media. “Banning Hema Hema on the flimsy excuse of being culturally inappropriate is like banning the dress for sexual assault,” Tashi Gyaltshen, a filmmaker, wrote on his Facebook page. “It’s a trashy slapstick humor that the dilettantes are so fond of.”
Facebook user Tshering Dorji added, “What a pity that BICMA and the censor board couldn’t see anything beyond the use of mask in a film, exquisitely made with such care in telling a story of our time, using masks as a skillful prop.”
