The Elders

THE ELDERS are Tibetan village elders who are united in the Mani Association. The Mani is a prayer from Lamaism, a form of Buddhism that is professed in Tibet and Mongolia. The disciples of the Mani Association jointly pray, but they also discuss more prosaic matters like the financial management. The Chinese director Sha Qing gives no comment. He just offers the viewer the privilege to be present while the elderly people - apparently not disturbed by the camera - converse, pray and gossip. Sha Qing has captured a type of daily religious life that may not exist for very much longer. After all, times are changing: a younger man suggests that they no longer carry their dead to the cemetery, but transport them by tractor. The elders discuss the rituals, thus resigning themselves to the approaching death, realising that so many others, and so many of their children, already preceded them.