Research Studio. Photo: C.Pleteshner (2022)

This made-in-Mongolia music video is a collaborative artistic expression of the philosophy and belief system of the people who made it. I think it reasonable to say that Zava Damdin Rinpoche is the auteur (lit. ‘author’) – a creative artist with a distinctive approach. I experience Zava Rinpoche’s film-making as being deeply personal and yet somehow unbounded by certain cinematic and narrative conventions. With this first cinematic production in collaboration with Bosgo Film’s Director Gan Achir, he has established his unique directorial style and thematic focus.

Earlier this year, Zava Bagsh invited me to work with him on the English language subtitling. How could I – why would I – say no?

Some viewers may not fully understand what they are looking at in this video. As an introduction, I feel the most important thing to point out to those of you less familiar with Mongolian culture and its Buddhist symbolic iconography, is that adornment with a five skull crown represents the successful transmutation of the five vices — ignorance, attachment, anger, pride and jealousy to more wholesome, some would say virtuous aspects of mind. Whilst some common synonyms for transmutation include convert or transform, transmute implies the transformation into a higher element or thing (cf. Merriam-Webster).

Here’s the Music Video

Welcome to Mongolia!

And the extraordinary cultural life of artists there!

Praise to the Five Dakinis Mongolian with English subtitles

© 2022. CP in Mongolia. This post is licensed under the  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions.   Posted: 19 June 2022. Last updated: 22 October 2022.