Producer and director Luc Schaedler (R) with cameraman Filip (L) and translator Vikash Pradhan. A Telegraph picture

Kalimpong, Dec. 5: A riddle wrapped in an enigma inside a mystery was how Winston Churchill described Russia.

He could well have been talking about Tibet as well, given the West’s obsession to know more about the inscrutable country, its people and culture.

It was this fascination that drew 40-year-old Luc Schaedler, a research scholar from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, to the land of the lamas in the 1980s.

Fascinated by his two-and-half-years east Asia trip, the Swiss is now making a film on Gendun Choephel (1903-51), a Tibetan monk.

Titled Angry Monk—The Documentary on the Controversial Tibetan Scholar, the 90-minute docu-drama, shot extensively in east Asia, explores the life and times of the “visionary monk”.

Kalimpong — Choephel had a deep affinity with the hill town — forms an important backdrop for the film.

The monk’s tryst with the hill town brought the research scholar-turned-filmmaker here a few weeks ago to shoot a portion of the docu-drama.

The Tibet Mirror Press at 10th Mile was the venue for the shooting.

The press, now in ruins, used to bustle with activities during the publication of Melong, arguably the first Tibetan newspaper, in 1935. Cheophel and Babu Tharchin, a Kalimpong resident, were the brains behind Melong.

He was also instrumental in forming the Tibet Improvement Party (TIP) in 1939 that aimed to reform his motherland.

The TIP was, however, banned by the then British government in 1946 and the monk was sent to jail in Lhasa. He was released in 1949. But his end was nigh. He passed away in 1951.

In spite of his falling health, he wrote a book, based on his extensive researches in both Indian and Tibet. Unfortunately it could be published after he his demise. By then, the Chinese had also occupied Tibet.

The film depicts Choephel’s travails and why Tibet could not become an independent nation despite “the best of efforts of several revolutionaries”. The docu-feature is also interspersed with interviews with his contemporaries to project a “balanced view”.

The under-production film comes close on the heels of a slew of films on Tibet, the current Hollywood flavour.