Summer Pasture

A rare glimpse inside Chinese-occupied Tibet, Summer Pasture closely chronicles a year in the lives of Locho and Yama, a yak-herding nomadic couple, and their infant daughter on the remote, windswept grasslands of Dzachukha. It’s an existence dominated by near-endless chores, especially for the women: cooking, milking, cheese-making, gathering and drying yak dung for fires, a crucial task in this cold, treeless environment. Yet there is rarely a sense of desperation. Locho and Yama’s love for their lifestyle is unmistakable. So is their love for each other, though they bicker at times like Tibetan Honeymooners. And though they cannot read, much to their expressed regret, they’re smart, philosophical and self-aware, already thinking ahead to their daughter’s future as modernity inexorably encroaches on their wide open space. With photography and editing worthy of a John Ford western, this documentary is an artful, dramatic, comedic, intimate portrait of a culture both unique and universal, and for this Summer Pasture receives a Peabody Award.