Bhutan's Melting Glaciers Form Backdrop To 'A Song For The Snow Lion'

The catastrophic flash floods in Nepal show the extreme peril posed by melting glacial ice in the Himalayas. The death toll stands at more than 1,300 after the August 26 disaster triggered by the collapse of a section of glacier, which plunged into water below setting off a tsunami-like surge. In the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, glacial melt caused by global warming is creating similar dangers. Glaciers, once solid ice, have been transformed into lakes at risk of spilling into river valleys with devastating consequences. Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji cites a fatal incident when a melting glacier 'became a lake and then the lake burst in the early '90s and killed hundreds of Bhutanese. But we don't hear the story because back then there was no social media and that valley was so remote. No one has any video footage of it.' The director, who earned the first Oscar nomination for his country with his 2019 film Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, came to the Telluride Film Festival to premiere his short documentary A Song for the Snow Lion, a film imbued with the ice-laden mythology of Bhutan. It's is a unique collaboration with famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who reached out to the director after seeing Lunana. 'I told [Yo-Yo] that if he's interested, we could work on a short film,' Dorji explains. 'And my first question to him was, 'What is it that you want to tell the story about?' And he said, 'Global warming. I'm very concerned about the melting glaciers of the Himalayas.' And for me, that has always been a concern. And for someone like Yo-Yo Ma, one of the greatest musicians, humanitarians, cultural ambassadors, to reach out and express care about something that's to do with my home, I felt I had to do it.' In the film, Ma accompanies Bhutanese folk singer Kelden Lhamo on a song that was heard in Lunana. The lyrics, about a yak herder and his beloved yak, reflect the centrality of nature and of ice in the Bhutanese consciousness: 'You, who wander where the glaciers meet the clouds/Thirst quenched by celestial glacial waters nourished by the sershong flowers…' Bhutan, where harmony with nature is a national imperative, has led the way to combat climate change. 'We are the only carbon negative country in the world,' Dorji notes. 'The constitution also says that forest coverage cannot be below 60 percent. And right now, it's at 72 percent. I was telling [Yo-Yo] that these values are passed down in Bhutan generation to generation, not through facts and figures and charts, but through folk tales, through songs that we sing.' Bhutan by itself cannot reverse global warming, of course. It is a crisis that requires coordinated international effort to combat, but despite grave warnings from the UN about global warming trends, governments including the U.S. have not taken decisive action. 'That's why films are so important because I think that politics alone is not going to [do it],' Ma tells Deadline. 'No [single] nation is going to solve this, but people and stories will, because if we create the narrative — and this film I think creates a narrative that says, 'Wait a minute, we treasure interdependence. We're part of nature.' So actually, if all of us get together, then things can get solved, which goes beyond nation… which goes beyond economics, goes beyond politics. But it's about the common narrative that we all have to believe in.' The film's title refers to a folk legend about a mythic creature that dwells in Bhutan's icy mountains, and suggests all that is being lost with melting glaciers. 'Children are taught to respect and honor the glaciers because it is the home to the snow lions,' Dorji explains. 'When I made the Yak in the Classroom, there were many children who I met up there in the highlands and they all said, 'Oh, we are worried because the glaciers are melting and one day maybe the snow lion will have no home.' And that's such a beautiful folk tale.' He continues, 'The glacier symbolizes the purity of action and aspiration. And the snow lion actually represents the enlightened mind, the awakened mind that is pure, majestic, fearless like the snow lion… And right now in the world, the purity of action and aspiration is disappearing and with that the awakened mind.' For the final scene in the documentary, Yo-Yo Ma and Kelden Lhamo perform the powerful song from Lunana, 'Yak Lebi Lhadar.' Pawo shot it in the mountains – very, very high up in the mountains. 'This is at like 18,000 feet,' Pawo tells us. 'We had literally only one morning to shoot that pivotal last scene… It was quite a challenge because I think a thousand and one things had to align perfectly for this to be possible.' Once conditions became suitable, Ma was choppered up to the site with his cello. A doctor came with him, because the elevation can be very dangerous, especially to those accustomed to living closer to sea level. 'Every time I asked Yo-Yo, he said, 'I'm fine. I'm fine.' But the doctor was, 'No, he's not fine,'' Dorji recalls. 'One of the most gifted musicians of our lifetime, and you are responsible for his wellbeing. So, that whole last scene, we shot it in one take.' Ma plays beautifully in that sequence, as in the zone as if he were performing at Carnegie Hall. But he acknowledges what was going on just off camera. 'They had to monitor heart and oxygen levels, and if it dips below a certain level, you have to have oxygen,' he says. 'And I actually had to have [oxygen] a couple times… I think they were incredibly careful about that and my family is grateful.' A startling noise punctuated the filming of that scene – the sound of a glacier giving way. 'At the end, the moment he finished playing, the glacier cracked, and I thought that was very beautiful,' Pawo says. 'It's almost like the Snow Lion was acknowledging our offering and our presence, but at the same time, it was talking to us and showing us the reality, the truth of the reality, the situation here.'