Cesta vede do Tibetu
| Title in English | Road through Tibet |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Requested lectures |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In 2026, seventy-two years had passed since the first visit of Czechoslovak citizens to Tibet, undertaken by the film director Vladimír Sís (1925–2001) together with the cinematographer Josef Vaniš (1927–2009). They were the first Czechoslovaks to reside in Lhasa and brought back multiple forms of testimony about their journey. Serving as military filmmakers in the People’s Republic of China, they collaborated with Chinese military film units to produce a one-hour colour documentary, The Road Leads to Tibet, which premiered internationally in 1956. In 2023, Luboš Bělka, in cooperation with colleagues from the Military Historical Institute, discovered a globally unique item: the Chinese version of this film, which differs substantially from the Czechoslovak one. Although the running time is nearly identical, the content diverges in many respects. The film also bears a somewhat different title: A Happy Journey to Lhasa (Tongxiang Lasa de xingfu daolu ?????????). The question of why this was the case—why the Chinese filmmakers found the Czechoslovak version unacceptable—can be answered through an examination of several surviving versions of the screenplay and, above all, through the still-unpublished travel diaries of both Czechoslovak travellers. These sources reveal the true circumstances surrounding the creation of the film and illuminate the points at which the Czechoslovak and Chinese approaches to documenting the construction of the Xining–Lhasa strategic highway diverged. For instance, the Chinese side sought to present many staged scenes as authentic, whereas the Czechoslovak filmmakers adhered to a different methodology. Notably, the film also records a meeting with the then nineteen-year-old 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (1935), and these scenes are genuinely documentary and unmanipulated. Yet even these differ markedly between the two versions, making their comparison particularly illuminating—especially in uncovering the reasons for their divergence. The public lecture and discussion were accompanied by numerous film excerpts, both colour and black-and-white photographs, as well as quotations from the aforementioned diaries, which were published in 2025 by the Brno-based publishing house Host. |
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