While this story s historical context is intriguing, its deeper affect is not documentary but dreamlike. White Snake s intimate action is limited to the brush of a hand over someone s hair, yet the expression of Sun s desire is vivid and memorable. Many of Geling s stories reveal contexts of profound poverty. Several are set in Tibet. This pure love outside of sexual love also is expressed in the young women s longing to be clean.
Bathing marks personal renewal.
They were all descending into a makeshift ditch. The water stank. Its surface was coated with a film from our morning bath that stuck to the water like a skin on boiled milk. The whole ditch filled with people, men and women together, protruding from the water like seedlings in a rice paddy. On and off the screen, these are deeply affecting stories rough-hewn, dark, and evocative.