Pema Tseden’s Other Legacy

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The Tibetan filmmaker was also a prolific writer of short stories. Last May, the author, translator, and filmmaker Pema Tseden died of a sudden heart attack in Lhasa. While the news came as a shock to all who knew him, myself included, the events of the past year prove that he has not been forgotten. His last film, “Snow Leopard,” released posthumously, won the Grand Prix at the 36th Tokyo International Film Festival last November before premiering in cinemas on the Chinese mainland in April. But Pema Tseden’s films are only one part of his legacy — he was also a prolific writer who produced 46 short stories in both Tibetan and Chinese. The last two of these — the fiction collection “Fresh Scent of Pine Wood” and a compendium of translated folklore “Tales of the Golden Corpse: Tibetan Folk Tales” — finally hit stores this May, on the one-year anniversary of his death. Their publication was something of a pet project of mine: my way of paying tribute to a great, if s ………………………………