Tingvong: A Lepcha Village in Sikkim
Tingvong: A Lepcha Village in Sikkim
| 01 January 2005 (USA)
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Tingvong: A Lepcha Village in Sikkim Trailers

The film illustrates the changes the Lepcha of the Dzongu reserve, North Sikkim, have been through in the last 60 years. From the 1940s, the Lepcha of Tingvong village gradually abandoned hunting, gathering and the slash and burn cultivation of dry rice, and became settled agriculturalists. Entire mountains sides were converted to cardamom and terraced for the cultivation of irrigated paddy. The irrigated rice and the cardamom cash crop not only brought the Lepcha within Sikkim’s market economy but helped create a surplus which could among other things be invested in religion. In the 1940s, the Lepcha of Tingvong embraced Buddhism and all its complex rituals without however abandoning their strong shamanic traditions. Today, both forms of rituals amiably co-exist in the village. This film is part of a long-term visual anthropology training project for the tribal communities of Sikkim.

Reviews
Grimossfer

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

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Fairaher

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

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Adeel Hail

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

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Darin

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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