Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait

Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait is a 2016 Bhutanese drama film written and directed by Khyentse Norbu. Shot in the temperate forests of central Bhutan and performed in Dzongkha, it was the director's fifth feature and his first set primarily in his country of birth since Travellers and Magicians (2003).^[1]

The film follows an isolated group of strangers who gather in a forest clearing every twelve years to participate in a hidden ritual under masks, an arrangement intended to dissolve the ego and to allow participants to act anonymously. When one of them breaks the rules of the ritual, the consequences carry through the rest of the film. Hema Hema premiered in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente section of the 69th Locarno Film Festival in August 2016 and went on to a special mention in the Platform programme of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.^[2]

In January 2017 the Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority declined to certify the film for screening inside Bhutan, citing its use of masks the regulator described as religious objects. The decision drew international press coverage and a public exchange between BICMA and the film's producer Pawo Choyning Dorji, and made Hema Hema a reference point in subsequent debates about cultural regulation of Bhutanese cinema.^[3]

Production

The film was produced by Pawo Choyning Dorji through the Bhutanese production company Dangphu Dingphu and co-produced with Hong Kong's Mandarin Films. Funding included a public Kickstarter campaign launched in 2014, which positioned the project as part of an emerging independent Bhutanese cinema.^[4]

Principal photography took place in forests near the Wang Chu valley in 2015. The cast combined non-professionals with established figures including the Tibetan singer Tsering Tashi Gyalthang and the Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka-fai, who appears in a small role. The masks worn on screen were designed for the film and have been described by the production team as composites rather than reproductions of any specific Bhutanese ritual mask.^[5]

Plot and Themes

The narrative is structured around the convocation of strangers, none of whom know each other's identities, who come together in the forest for fifteen days under the supervision of an elder figure. Khyentse Norbu has framed the film publicly as a meditation on the bardo, the intermediate state between death and rebirth in Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, with the masked encampment standing in for the disorientation of consciousness in transition. Critics writing in Cinema Scope, Variety and Screen Daily placed the film in the tradition of allegorical art cinema and noted the unusual reliance on movement, costume and masked choreography in place of conventional dialogue.^[6]

Bhutan Screening Ban

BICMA's decision not to issue a public exhibition certificate for Hema Hema was communicated to the producer in January 2017, following a review by the National Film Review Board and consultation with the Department of Culture under the then Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs. The grounds cited were that the film's depiction of masks was "not in keeping with Bhutanese tradition and culture", with reviewers concerned that audiences might mistake the film's invented masks for sacred objects used in tsechu mask dances.^[7]

In a public letter dated 18 January 2017, producer Pawo Choyning Dorji asked BICMA to identify the specific rule the film violated and questioned the precedent the decision set for Bhutanese filmmakers working with Buddhist iconography. He later announced that the production would not formally appeal. The decision was condemned by international producer Jeremy Thomas, who had been involved in distribution discussions, and was covered by Global Voices, Scroll.in and Screen Daily.^[8]

Reception and Legacy

Hema Hema received festival distribution in Europe and North America through Coproduction Office and was reviewed broadly within the international art-cinema press, where responses were mixed: critics praised the visual design and ritual choreography while questioning the film's pacing. Within Bhutan the screening ban turned the film into a touchstone for discussions of artistic freedom and the relationship between cinema and religion, and it has continued to be cited in writing about Bhutanese cultural regulation alongside the later international success of Khyentse Norbu's producer, who went on to direct the Academy Award-shortlisted Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom and The Monk and the Gun.^[9]

References

1. Hema Hema — Wikipedia
2. Locarno Film Review: Hema Hema — Variety, August 2016
3. Hema Hema cannot be screened in Bhutan: BICMA — Kuensel
4. Hema Hema Kickstarter campaign page
5. Seeing the Sacred: Interview with Pawo Choyning Dorji — Buddhistdoor Global
6. Hema Hema review — Cinema Scope
7. As Hema Hema producer challenges decision BICMA says they can appeal — The Bhutanese
8. Bhutan's Authorities Ban Film for 'Misusing' Religious Masks on Screen — Global Voices, 19 January 2017
9. Khyentse Norbu's Film 'Hema Hema' Offers a Visionary Glimpse of the Bardo — Lion's Roar