Special Projects

MUSTANG 2 – FOLLOW UP TO ORIGINAL CINEMA FILM

Currently shooting follow-up to original cinema documentary “Mustang The Hidden Kingdom”. Shot over 20 years, it will be completed in 2015.

In 1993 Tony directed and shot a cinema-released documentary in a remote Tibetan kingdom, high up in the Himalayas that had been closed for 30 years. The film followed the journey of the Dalai Lama’s special envoy, Kamptruel Rinpoche,  from exile in India, to the ‘forbidden kingdom’ as Mustang was known.

It was an arduous journey of some five months, at the end of which the King of Mustang insisted on sending back two children – a 5 and 6 year old, to be educated close to his His Holiness the Dalai Lama in exile in Dharamsala, India.

The aim was to forge a living link between these two outposts of Tibetan culture. It was hoped that Darsang and Wangdue would one day return to Mustang (having had a first-rate Tibetan education) and help Mustang preserve & revitalise its Tibetan heritage.

Tony has filmed the two boys since they were five and six. Recently they finished university. The destiny of these two small children was changed radically when they were pulled away from their families. If it were not for the film, these two would never have left home. As filmmaker Tony is involved in their story, he is to an extent implicated in their journey.

The boys feel a great responsibility to Mustang and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but they also feel the allure of technology and the excitement of the modern world. How will they reconcile the medieval farmyard culture of their birth with the 21st Century?
This film documents 20 years in their lives.

Format: Cinema documentary, shot in HD and S16mm.

AMELIA CESSNA