Siphai Thammavong has dedicated his life to preserving the traditions of storytelling in Laos and there’s a growing sense of urgency in his quest.
As we discover in Claudia Bellasi and Markus Steiner Ender’s richly evocative documentary The Guardian of Stories, the keepers of the country’s folktales are dying out and Thammavong’s fear is that these ancient tales will be lost to time, the generations now and to come who seem more transfixed by their smartphones than Laos’ rich oral histories.
So, the Italian filmmakers travel with Thammavong deep into the country to meet these keepers of history, and the audience is granted the chance to listen in and watch as some of the stories are played out via the marvelous puppetry of Laos’ Khao Niew Lao Theater — based in the capital Vientiane.
Among them is the story of “The Frog Eats the Moon,” which seeks to explain the story behind the phenomenon of a lunar eclipse — it involves that frog, along with a snake and a squirrel, a healer and his magic herbs.
It all makes for wonderful and informative entertainment, which combines the quirks and the comedy of puppets with the deep narrative drive of a worthy mission while allowing its audience the space to pause and to think about what Laos — and the world — might well be losing, all set against the stunning surrounds that abound in the Southeast Asian nation.
The story behind the documentary — which is in the running for this week’s Golden Goblet at the Shanghai International Film Festival — adds to it a whole extra dimension.
The Guardian of Stories
Bellasi and Steiner Ender are the forces that drive the annual Asfaltart Street Art Festival in the high northern Italian city of Merano. They were on a five-month talent-sourcing trip across Southeast Asia three years ago when they came to meet the puppeteers of the Khao Niew Lao Theater, who then spoke of Thammavong and the work he does for tourists in his native river-side city of Luang Prabang, recounting to them the oral histories of Lao.
“We didn’t wait for funds; we just decided to make this film,” explains Steiner Ender on the sidelines of SIFF.
“We needed to catch the moment because Siphai had his pressure to save the stories. He said he had one month, or two months’ time to do this, and so we said, ‘OK, we will come,” adds Bellasi.
The film’s Brazilian producer, Lu Pulici, jumped on board, given his own background as a puppeteer and his work making films with puppets at his Spain-based Trukitrek Films.
“When they had the idea to do this film, and knowing that they wanted to make this kind of film — with people and with puppets — I said ‘Wow. Let’s go to Laos!’,” he recalls.
The presence of Thammavong as the film’s central storyteller gives the film its narrative core, and there’s a palpable passion for his work as he sometimes sits on the ground, with notepad and pen at the ready, satchel slung over his shoulder and deeply immersed in the tales he is hearing.
The filmmakers say they were at pains to ensure the film was a collaborative effort involving European filmmaking experience with the crew they worked with on the ground in Laos, a nation with a nascent and slowly growing film industry of its own.
“It was important to us that we just didn’t come in and film — we had to all work together to tell this story and their stories,” says Steiner Ender.
The filmmakers are hoping now, from Shanghai, to reach audiences at other international festivals and to find international distribution partners. The audience certainly would certainly appear to be out there — the three Shanghai screenings sold out within hours.
SIFF’s Golden Goblet award winners will be announced on June 21.