Growing up, documentary filmmaker Tom Peosay loved listening to his globetrotting father spin yarns about traveling to exotic locations. Since then, the 43-year-old Los Altos native has turned that fascination into a career of shedding light on faraway lands.
Most recently, Peosay focused his attention on a long forbidden region in the Far East.
Over the course of 10 years, Peosay and his wife, Sue, made nine trips to Tibet, Nepal and India to make the eye-opening documentary “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion.”
The film opened in October at art house theaters across the country and is showing this month at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto.
Blending together historic newsreel footage, smuggled police tapes and home video, “Cry” chronicles Tibet’s struggle for freedom and serves up an intimate look at the elusive Tibetan people and culture.
Anyone who has ever seen a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker probably already knows the story: The simple and colorful civilization remained isolated for centuries behind the Himalayas. Then, Mao Tse-tung’s violent “peaceful liberation” of Tibet in 1949 led to Chinese colonization that, much like the European settlers did in America, is laying waste to an indigenous culture.
“Cry” incorporates rarely seen footage of Tibetan rituals, festivals and political demonstrations; personal interviews with notable figures such as the Dalai Lama, and picturesque cinematography, spanning everything from mountaintop temples to a Tibetan Freedom concert in San Francisco.
After completing his nearly decade-long jaunt, Peosay managed to get some of the film industry’s well known activists to step up to the plate and help out. Martin Sheen narrates the film, with additional voice-overs from Tim Robbins, Ed Harris and Susan Sarandon.
The film runs one hour and 51 minutes and is not rated.
Before setting off to explore the far reaches of the world, Peosay lived in Los Altos since the age of 3. After graduating from Los Altos High School in 1978, he studied photography at Foothill College until transferring to the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1982. Upon receiving degrees in geography and environmental studies, Peosay began traveling to Tibet with his wife in 1987.
