Arghya Basu l Listeners Tale l 2008

Listener’s Tale is a journey into hinterlands of a magical history; a stroll along the margins of Time. Sikkim / Beyul Demadzong, an erstwhile Tibetan Monarchy, is revered as a land of hidden treasures consecrated and blessed by Guru Padmasambhava, the immortal messiah of Tibetan Buddhism in the 8th Century AD, so that Dharma finds home in troubled times. In the 12th century, a blooodpact is signed between Lepcha chief Thekung Tek, and Khye Bumsa, a wandering Tibetan king.
The great snow mountain Kanchendzongha, guardian deity of the land, stands witness. Chakdor Namgyal, its 18th century legendary Tibetan monk-king, dreams of the mountain dancing with his warriors in the court of Lord Mahakala.
He writes the Pangtoed Chham dance to immortalize the Lepcha-Bhutia alliance. Pangtoed Chham is a code of hidden memoirs etched on the epitaph of sacred mysteries. Its spectacle unfolds in the film as an ageold whisper amidst the chorus of modernity and scepticism. Listener’s Tale goes on a journey into this ever changing canvas witnessing fact and fiction dissolve in the dialogue between artist and medium.
Format DV / Colour & B/W Duration 76mins.
Language Hindi, English
Year of Production 2007
Director Arghya Basu
Camera Arghya Basu Manas Bhattacharya
Editing Arghya Basu
Production Seasongray
Listener’s Tale is the story of a triple journey. First, a journey in Sikkim. Next, a journey in time, tracing back the course of history from the birth of the kingdom of Sikkim and its people, the Lepchas. Finally, an initiatory journey, with art (painting, music, dance, architecture) and religion (Buddhism) as its mean vectors. It is actually one and the same unreal, circular and majestic journey, within a web of materials, images, colours, sounds, texts and prayers, landscapes and objects, traces and dates, men, gods and places. With its tormented history of alliances, betrayals, invasions, liberations and prophecies, Sikkim is revealed, concealed, diffracted and celebrated. This story comes to us from various sources: the wind, rain, the humidity and mold on the mountain slopes, the babble of streams deep in the valleys and the branches’ wailing, the thangkas now painted in workshops, the large frescoes with eroded colours on temple and cave walls, the lush vegetations, the stubble-burning on the site of the kingdom’s first capital, the monks’ prayers, the historian’s questions, the powerful protection of the “mountain god”. And finally from the filmmaker himself, in the eye of this strom. Multiple and fragmentary, unfinished and epic, it has no author, it doesn’t itself exist. Only someone who hears it can reconstitute its movement.
-Yann Lardeau. Cinema Du Reel

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