YDA-Winning Film Makes an Appeal to Ice-Hockey's 'Dalai Lama'

When Bistro Films director Marek Partys was tasked with highlighting the work of Czech charity Brontosaurus in the Himalayas, he homed in on one boy's quest to bring Jaromir Jágr, 'the Dalai Lama of ice hockey' to his remote mountain village. 

Perched high in the mountains of the northern Indian region of Ladakh (known as Little Tibet), Mulbekh numbers 5,730 people and a few goats. Life here is fairly typical of a traditional Himalayan village. There is Buddhism, there are goats. There’s a lot of snow. Mountain scenery. The goats of course. 

Sometimes, things can get a bit on the samey side. Folks turn to booze. Kids get restless. Enter the Czech non-profit organisation Brontosaurus in the Himalayas, which runs educational, cultural exchange schemes to keep things lively and launched a project to build an ice hockey pitch in the village and raise a local team.

This charming film follows the tale of a Tibetan boy, Lobzang, who idolises the Czech ice-hockey legend Jaromir Jágr, a.k.a. Jarda, and desperately wants to play as well as him. The boy’s zeal is infectious – soon his friends and family are all involved in this direct appeal to Jágr to high-tail it over to Mulbekh and become the town’s new coach.

shots caught up with Partys who told us about the challenges of filming in a high-altitude remote village in sub-zero temperatures ("a little bit tricky"), and also the life lessons the wonderful experience taught him. 

Tell us about the project in Mulbekh that led to the making of this film.

The non-profit organisation Brontosaurs in the Himalayas has been helping in this small village in Ladakh since 2009. They built a school there and every year volunteers come to share their education with the locals and in return the locals teach the Czechs Buddhism, meditation and about their deep connection with nature. But the winter in Little Tibet is a bit tricky; it’s about minus 30 degrees Celsius from November to March. In these conditions, the school closes and boredom becomes a real problem in the village. The older ones fight it with alcohol. So the Brontosaurs decided to build an ice-hockey rink in the village and bring Czech trainers to teach the villagers how to play ice-hockey.

The project will run for five years and its purpose is to keep the children busy to deter them from negative behaviour. The secondary motive is to raise an Indian national team and a new generation of ice hockey players in Mulbekh. Our mission was to create a video that would raise public awareness of the project in the Czech Republic. And I think that has been achieved.  The reach of the video on social media was around 1 million people.

How did you approach the villagers about making the film? Was there any resistance to it?

The Brontosaurus in Himalayas has a really good reputation in the village, so they trust almost anybody who is connected with the organisation. Therefore, they were very open minded and most of the villagers came to see us during the shoot. They also invited us to local celebrations –  they treated us like honorable guests.

How did you select your cast, in particular the little boy Lobzang?

The way we chose the actors was very similar to a usual casting. There was one man who had a crucial role in the production process – Samphel Tsering, a builder in Mulbekh. He knew every corner of the village and almost every resident, so he organised a meeting with a bunch of locals in the village square Lobzang was my first choice right from the start. But Samphel pointed out that he was the naughtiest boy in the village and it could be very tricky to shoot with him. But I was convinced he was the one – he didn’t prove me wrong.

Did you have a firm idea of the script before you began filming or was it improvised?

Yes, I developed the script before the actual shoot, long before leaving for Little Tibet. I wanted to be sure that we knew what we were shooting and where we were taking this film.

It would have been too risky to improvise the script on the spot. But on the other hand, there wasn't a storyboard. Mainly because I think that a storyboard would have limited this kind of a project, a storyboard only kills the openness towards various situations and the dynamics that can arise during a shooting. So, there were some basic scenes planned, such as Lobzang's training, sewing the number on or praying to Jagrlama. Other scenes, like the one with the cellphone, came about spontaneously during the shooting.

 Did you encounter any obstacles filming in a remote mountain village?

The biggest obstacle was communication, because the Ladakh's language is very archaic even in comparison to the Indian language. Apart from our fixer Samphel, nobody spoke English. So when verbal communication failed, it was necessary to communicate with our hands and feet.  Thanks to that, a unique atmosphere was created on the set. We laughed a lot and became close to each other. I was surprised how similar we really are as people.

Another another issue was the cold and the altitude. During the first days it was really exhausting to climb a small hill due to these factors. The crew consisted of three people only – DP Dusan Husar, AC Ludvik Otevrel and myself – so any company moves or transport of the equipment was as demanding as jogging all day. However not all the production issues were more difficult than usual – for example it was much easier to attain locations permits than in any European country! 

Jagr is considered to be one of the world’s greatest pro ice hockey players, how has he responded to the film?

The head of [Brontosaurus] foundation discussed the topic with Jagr through his close friend, but honestly, he didn't pay much attention to it. Reportedly the video amused him, but his career has been going through some challenging  patches, so he has had more important things to deal with.

Did the experience leave any lasting impressions on you?

Absolutely. The main knowledge gained from this trip was that there is no direct proportion between satisfaction with life and material wealth. The locals live in difficult conditions but despite that they are very hospitable and always in a good mood. This is probably due to Buddhism, which is the dominant practice in the village. The inclination towards solidarity and caring for nature wins over materialism in every respect. I think we have a lot to learn from them.

Has the film had an impact on the village community?

Yes, about a month after the release of the film, the director of the foundation told me that Lobzang is a village hero everyone has started to call him Jarda. As I mentioned at the beginning, until that time he had been perceived as a naughty child with no interest in school. Now everybody accepts him. Norboo, the director of the school, wrote to me saying: “I realised that we evaluate children only as good or bad according to their study results. But if someone is talented in sport it is understandable that he won't be so interested in studies. I've completely revised the way I think about children and I will try to reflect that in how we evaluate the students at school.“ This is for me much more important than number of viewers on social networks.