Delamu (documentary on the Tea-Horse Road)

At a slow pace, reflecting the pace of the horse caravans which traverse the mountainous region on the Tibetan border and the pace of life of the local inhabitants, Tian shoots the rugged scenery and interviews the people who live in it. He's wanting to record how it is before the automobile road goes through and changes it forever.
Coming out afterwards, I said to my wife, "I think that successfully conveyed what it was setting out to convey." She asked me what that was, and I said, "That people are just people, wherever they are." That was what she'd been thinking too. The elderly people remember the hard times and how they got through them, their loves and their losses. The middle-aged people talk about their current joys and sorrows, and their struggles, relational and economic. The young people are idealistic, naiive, thinking about the future, very aware of the pull of sex and of the appeal of the more complex life elsewhere. It could be in Africa, it could be in remote parts of Europe, it could be in South America. It happens to be in Tibet.