Piano to Zanskar

Michael Sulima’s heart-warming documentary follows the endeavour to lug a piano to a school high in the Himalayas.

Piano to Zanskar is a simple, straightforward documentary which has picked up four awards and will doubtless find an audience ready to appreciate it, not least because most of it was shot in the Indian Himalayas. Michael Sulima who directed it was also the photographer and he has made the most of the scenery both en route to the village of Lingshed and around that location. What he was recording was a singular expedition undertaken to bring a Broadwood piano to the primary school out there known to be in need of it.

This remarkable endeavour was the brainchild of Desmond O’Keefe who lived in London’s Camden Town where he owned a piano shop having spent a lifetime tuning pianos. When approaching his sixty-fifth birthday he decided that to deliver this piano, despite obviously involving difficulties (no existing road leads all the way to Lingshed), would be something truly worthwhile. He saw it as a cultural exchange of an unusual and practical kind with a piano from the UK assisting the appreciation of music on the other side of the world. He would be assisted in this task by a young conservationist, Anna Ray, and by a Swede with some climbing experience, Härald Hägegard. Piano to Zanskar charts the week that it took them to get the piano from the city of Leh to Lingshed itself. It then covers their reception and the preparation of the piano in the hope that damage that it suffered during the journey would not prevent the instrument from functioning properly.

Viewed as a picturesque adventure tale, the film has appeal, but the timing of its arrival here puts it in competition with the memorable Romantic Road which opened recently. In that film an English couple undertook a journey through India in a Rolls-Royce and, theoretically, that was the film which might have seemed self-centred and patronising given that our colonial history is now more often regarded as distressing than admirable. Yet the couple featured were so engaging, their concern for the poor peoples of India so evident, that Romantic Road proved to be a delight. In Piano to Zanskar, O’Keefe and his companions are made the central focus, but it is the local Sherpas who suffer the burden of this dangerous work. Admittedly, local concerns are touched on, but even then nothing much emerges from discussion as to whether or not a proposed road if completed will indeed benefit the village.

Personally I found Romantic Road by far the more involving film, just as 2018’s Children of the Snow Land, which was set in Nepal, combined Himalayan scenery with a wonderful portrait of village children and in doing so went deeper. But it is only fair to acknowledge that many viewers will find this a heart-warming tale - how else could it have won those awards including a Gold for Best Film at 2020’s Sheffield Adventure Film Festival?

MANSEL STIMPSON

Featuring  Desmond O’Keefe, Anna Ray, Härald Hägegard, Kristina Nadler, Tashi Angchok, Sonam Jospel, Karma Namgyal. 

Dir Michael Sulima, Pro Jarek Kotomski, Ph Michael Sulima, Ed Michael Sulima, Kevin Palmer and Agathe Darbier, Music Ernst Reijseger and Daniel Sonabend. 

Between Friends-Tull Stories.
86 mins. UK. 2018. Rel: 19 November 2021. Cert. 12A .