“Encounters: Memories, Museums, Empire and Exile” + Q&A - Tibet Film Festival London
Running time: 47 mins
Genre:
Release Date: 25/09/2026
The 6th edition of Tibet Film Festival London returns to the Genesis and we’re kicking off with a special double bill of new documentary short films by two incredible Tibetan women directors, “Encounters: Memories, Museums, Empire and Exile” by Nyima Murry and a new short film by Kunsang Kyirong.
“Encounters” was commissioned to be part of an exhibition at Kedleston Hall - an 18th-century Grade I listed National Trust property in Derbyshire - titled How Did We Get Here?. The exhibition is a collaboration between the National Trust and members of the Tibetan community living in Britain. “Encounters” traces intertwined journeys of displacement experienced by both historical artefacts and a diasporic community to reveal the entangled histories that link Britain’s imperial rule in India with its historic invasion into Tibet. “Encounters” is a moving exploration of memory, identity, ownership, and the enduring legacy of empire.
Both directors Nyima Murry and Kunsang Kyirong will take part in a live Q&A and discussion after the screenings in conversation with Dr. Emma Martin, Senior Lecturer in Museology, Art History and Cultural Practices at University of Manchester specialising in Tibetan museology and material culture.
Bios:
Nyima Murry is a British-Tibetan designer and artist. Her research-based practice spans filmmaking, installation, and design to write alternative histories of landscape and the built environment, centring the marginalised and diasporic communities whose presence rarely survives in national or architectural archives.
Kunsang Kyirong is a Tibetan-Canadian filmmaker. Her debut feature 100 SUNSET premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was the recipient of the Best Canadian Discovery Award-Honorable Mention. Her work has exhibited at The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and elsewhere. She lives in Montreal.
Dr Emma Martin is Senior Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester. She has more than 25 years of experience as a curator of collections from South Asia, the Himalayas and Tibet. Her research sits at the intersection of colonialism(s), Tibetan Studies, museum activism, and materiality and moves between contemporary museum practice in Tibetan exile contexts and historical research on Tibetan materiality in British colonial archives.
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