Sakya Bamo is a well-known witch figure in Tibetan folklore, often depicted as a mysterious being with fluctuating moods, ranging from melancholy to frenzy. From last year until the beginning of this year, our art group conducted in-depth fieldwork in Tibet, dedicated to collecting oral narratives and folk memories related to the Bamo.
During the process of organizing these materials, we observed a thought-provoking phenomenon: the stories of the Bamo abruptly ceased in the 1990s, with no new tales circulating among the people since. Their final image often remains that of a hitchhiking woman encountered by drivers on late-night roads. This discontinuity has prompted a series of questions: Why did the narratives of the Bamo stop evolving? In a Tibet undergoing modern transformation, what has the Bamo become? Are they merely a vanishing folk illusion, or do they persist in new forms, lurking at the margins of contemporary society?
This film, as a creative project by our art group, seeks to explore the cultural significance of the Bamo in present-day Tibet from historical and folkloristic perspectives. By blending documentary and fictional visual languages, we not only investigate the mystery behind the disappearance of the Bamo legends but also aim to reflect on Tibetan identity, female imagery, and the survival of mysticism amid modernization. This work is both a quest for lost narratives and an attempt to render the invisible visible.