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Review: Butter Lamp (Oscar-Nominated Short Film)

by Taylor Sinople on February 8, 2015
Butter Lamp Film

Butter Lamp may be more a series of compelling sentences than a completed short story, but it’s unlike any Academy Award-nominated short film from this year or last.

The idea is brilliantly simple: a traveling photographer sets up shop and spends a day shooting portraits for indigenous Tibetan families, bringing with his collection of large backdrops. The families come, select a backdrop, and have their picture taken. This series of events, captured from a single, static camera position by director Hu Wei and featuring a number of non-professional actors, makes up the whole of Butter Lamp. Also found here: life, humor, truth, and urgency.

The primary conceit is one derived from the clash of tradition and modernity. The Tibetan subjects – large families, a group of young brothers, a teenaged couple – come dressed in long, traditional dresses, but pose in front of international Chinese iconography such as The Great Wall, the Beijing Olympic Stadium, and Disneyland. This clash between their authentic culture and the façades of various modern sights creates the conflict that Wei confronts.

If the purpose of a photograph is to mark a memory – one indicative of a specific time and place – what desire drives these families to select backdrops other than their own? The answer seems to be embedded in the ongoing influence of Chinese culture on Tibetan identity. The subjects’ preference of being photographed in front of lavish, world-famous settings seems to fulfill an aspiration that is touristic in nature. From an outside perspective, particularly a Western one, this arrangement presents a distinct sense of destabilization of place and time. Those with the financial means to travel will likely view these obviously fake backdrops as “touristy” (in a derogatory sense), especially in comparison to the rural Tibetan vistas that these people likely witness every day.

This begs the question: what exactly is behind these assorted backdrops that the photographer and subjects are so keen to cover up? The reveal, the only time in which the camera shifts focus, is powerful, but leaves larger questions in its wake. How important is truth in these photos? Are the indigenous Tibetans going through the grinding process of cultural evolution or becoming woefully alienated?

The most interesting vignette is one featuring an elderly woman who, upon seeing her vinyl backdrop unrolling – a temple – falls to her knees, quite literally worshipping the surface level. Despite the intellectual weight of its material, nearly every scene in Butter Lamp is sprinkled with the quiet humor of real life. Hu Wei succeeds as a filmmaker aware of the structural constraints of the short format. He sets out to make a 16-minute film, not a proof of concept pitch for a 90-minute one. It suggests a great capacity for ethnographic achievement, should Wei decide to shift his focus to documentary work in the future. As a neutral presentation of cultural realities through the artifice of narrative cinema, Butter Lamp is an impressive and unexpected play on art and life imitating one another.

Continue Reading Issue #36
Language

Tibetan

Runtime

15 minutes

Genre

Drama, Foreign

Director

Hu Wei

(All Reviews), Drama, Foreign, Issue #36, Reviews
Academy AwardsButter LampHu WeioscarsShort Films
Academy Awards, Butter Lamp, Hu Wei, oscars, Short Films
About the Author
Taylor Sinople
Taylor Sinople
Taylor is a Chicago-based writer and aspiring film historian. He is the editor here at TFP, and has contributed to a number of international publications such as Cinema Scandinavia, PopMatters, and Room 101 Magazine. He can also be found listening to podcasts, researching topics he has little use for, or running after a city bus.
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Oscars 2015: Our Picks and Predictions — Part 2

by The Focus Pull Staff on February 19, 2015
On Monday, we posted PART ONE of our picks for the 2015 Academy Awards. Now we’re back to break down the remaining categories by who seems most likely to win on the big night and who truly deserves it. To keep track of how well we did with our predictions, watch the Oscars live on […]
 

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We’re just about ready to close the doors on 2014, but before we do, let’s take a look at the Oscar nominations that we know just have to win, and those we can’t help but wish would. To keep track of how well we did with our predictions, watch the Oscars live on Sunday, February 22nd. […]
 

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by Taylor Sinople on January 15, 2015
The official nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced on Thursday, January 15th at 5:30am PST. The winners will be announced at the ceremony live on Oscar Sunday – February 22nd, 2015. Check back in with us weekly for discussion on the nominees and snubs! BEST PICTURE American Sniper Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of […]
 

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by Zack Miller on September 14, 2014
The third day of the festival took me on a morning journey to Sweden in back-to-back wintery films “Force Majeure” and “Santa Quest.” The former, directed by Ruben Östlund, has already been chosen to represent Sweden at the 2015 Academy Awards and is one of my favorite viewings so far. It takes place at a […]
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