Digital Dharma: One Man's Mission to Save a Culture
Funds Needed for Completion: $ 490,000.00
Estimated Completion Date: 04/30/2009
Synopsis
Can one man, a Mormon from Utah, who would do everything possible to keep from going to war… start a quiet revolution against the obliterationbr>
In 1959 — Red Army soldiers invade Tibetan villages, destroying homes and temples. Fleeing refugees leave behind countless artifacts – the last evidence of an ancient culture.
In the shadow of the foreboding Himalayas, a small band stands on a ledge. Their lives, their families, and their history depend on a successful escape. Hidden securely in their packs is documentation of a culture that is heading for extinction. Carrying centuries of philosophy, religion, science and art, they cling to a precipice, inching toward the future.
Can one man, a Mormon from Utah, who would do everything possible to keep from going to war… start a quiet revolution against the obliteration of a culture not his own?
Digital Dharma is the chronicle of a cultural rescue. This feature-length HD documentary brings to light the magnitude of one man’s 40-year inspirational journey to save the literary history of a disappearing culture and to preserve early lessons of mankind’s consciousness.
The life of E. Gene Smith is an epic story of destiny and compassion that leads a pacifist on a mission of survival. During an era of espionage and mistrust, Gene’s mission becomes the catalyst for an international movement to save ancient writing and art from crumbling, literally, to dust… and then deliver them to the entire world.
This powerfully moving account crosses multiple borders... geographically, politically and philosophically... Because the humanitarian and academic efforts to protect the Tibetan culture by finding and preserving thousand-year-old documents, is not only a contribution to the Tibetan people… it is a contribution to all of humanity, saving 1500 years of invaluable teachings: from the medical to the mystical, a chronicle of the advancements of mankind. These documents include the Tibetans’ original contributions as well as the traditional works of the great Indian scholars and masters, which were systematically documented and preserved in Tibet. As our world’s political and cultural borders shift, protecting all knowledge and its far-reaching contributions becomes critical.
Budget:
$ 490,000.00
Project's Financial Needs
All monies will be used to cover production and post production costs as well as promotional/marketing needs and ancillary materials being developed in conjunction with, and in support of, the documentary.
Other financial Support
Seed funding of $60,000 was granted from the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation. Individual donations being collected through the documentary website with fiscal sponsorship and 501(c)(3) status under the Greater Philadelphia Film Office to date total less than $2000.
Current stage of production
Production
Estimated Completion Date
04/30/2009
Background
E. Gene Smith was born in Utah and raised a Mormon. After studying science and anthropology at various Universities, a propensity for obscure languages allows Gene to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. While studying Sanskrit and Tibetan at the University of Seattle in 1960 Gene is interested in studying Tibetan Buddhism from a scholar’s perspective. He offers to help Buddhist refugees seeking political asylum assimilate to American life. The Phuntsok Phodrang family of the Sakyapa. Deshung Rinpoche, one of the most learned Lamas who escaped Tibet, is a part of this group. Gene teaches English to Deshung and Deshung teaches Gene about Tibetan culture and Buddhism. Unable to find texts to further aid his studies, Deshung then urges his eager student to travel to India to meet other lamas and find more texts to study.
A study grant under a Foreign Area Fellowship Program funds his trip to Southeast Asia. With letters of introduction from Deshung Rinpoche to important lamas, doors begin to open for Gene as he travels through India, Bhutan and Mongolia meeting many Tibetan Refugees. In India, he studies with noted lamas and teachers such as Geshe Lobsang Lungtok, Drukpa Thuksay Rinpoche, Khenpo Noryang, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. In 1968, Gene starts working at the Library of Congress field office in New Delhi, India. Despite a common mistrust of Americans, widely regarded suspiciously as possible CIA agents, Gene’s home becomes a haven for scholars, writers, government officials and Buddhists of all nationalities. Because there is no political agenda, discussions range from philosophy, religion, art, and history to how to save Tibetan culture. Important lamas often stay for weeks at a time. Gene soaks up their knowledge and, using his infamous photographic memory, writes essays about the different traditions of Buddhism. These refugees – lamas and lay people – become the bridge to the next step on Gene’s path.
From this haven Gene establishes a network to begin collecting and reprinting important Tibetan texts. This network was the incubator for many students who are now considered the world’s leading scholars in Asian Studies and religious leaders including: Dzongsar Khyentse Thubten Chökyi Gyamtso, now recognized as one of the leading contributors to the shaping of Buddhism in the west; and a French science student, Mathieu Ricard, who has become a revered philosopher, author, and monk. Under an aura of fear that Chinese aggression would escalate to invade India, a preservation program begins to take shape.
Then a new U.S. aid effort, spear-headed by Senator Pat Moynihan, gives Gene the opportunity to escalate his mission and – in so many words – exchange food for thought. Public law 480 initiative (PL480) encourages developing countries to buy surplus U.S. wheat and other agricultural products with local currencies. The government took the money it made on the wheat and put it back into cultural and scientific programs to benefit those same countries. Gene puts the haphazard nature of these allocations to better use. His legal manipulation of PL480 gives him the funds to draw out Tibetans wary of exposing their hidden woodblocks or faded texts and crumbling manuscripts in exchange for food and enhanced copies.
Gene and his colleagues use the funds to make copies of rare and important texts that have been smuggled out of Tibet by exiles of all five lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. The copies are sent back to North America, to the United States and Canada, and installed in the libraries of over 20 universities, including Harvard and the University of Washington. These and other texts are also made available to Tibetan monks. All tolled, the PL 480 program acquires around 8,000 Tibetan volumes.
But it isn’t just the priceless Tibetan canon that Gene sends back to the United States for copying and preserving (in many cases, only one copy of a text had survived) – he also sends his notes. His commentaries put each manuscript in historical, religious, and cultural context for Western scholars struggling to understand the Dharma. The walls of Gene's home in Dehli become lined with thousands of Tibetan books and all visitors marvel at his ability to find an obscure book, hidden amid stacks of texts, without hesitation.
For 20 years Gene not only uncovers lost Tibetan texts, he helps shape the PL480 initiative to more directly give funds to Library of Congress offices worldwide to purchase books and art for U.S. libraries and universities, to further their then-limited understanding of foreign cultures.
When Gene is transferred to Jakarta and Cairo in the late 1980’s PL480 no longer applies, but his growing network continues the mission he initiated in Asia. When more Tibetan Buddhist texts begin appearing in China after the revolution, though it is dangerous and illegal, Gene uses his contacts to acquire those as well. Today Gene has amassed the largest library of Tibetan books in the world.
Gene retires from the Library of Congress in 1997, and becomes known as the “go-to guy,” the preeminent expert in the U.S. for anyone who wants to study Tibetan culture and literature. In 1999 he and a group of friends establish The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) in Cambridge Massachusetts, with the goal of digitizing every text in his collection, now over 12,000 volumes. In 2002 the TBRC relocates its offices to the Rubin Museum in New York City. Their goal is to escalate and advance the preservation of the Tibetan cultural heritage by making its literary tradition widely available.
Until recently, these ancient accounts of religion, philosophy, biography and literary arts are accessible to only a handful of scholars who can travel to the TBRC. With the digital technology of scanning, and Gene’s dedication to his 40-year mission, this amazing historical collection of more than 12,000 texts will be easily accessible to the global community… to anyone who has access to a computer and the Internet.
Gene’s intent is not only to scan and encourage the publication of all of the texts, but also to encourage the translation of these works into English for the very first time and summarize their importance and relationship as a whole. An unknown number of Tibetan writings are still lost across China*, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, and Katmandu. Gene and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) are conducting ongoing negotiations to discover, recover, and preserve them. The ultimate goal is to complete the sacred texts’ journey: returning the books to their homeland in their traditional form as well as on a hard drive the size of a small paperback, accessible to even the most remote monasteries and villages.
While E. Gene Smith is widely acknowledged to be the savior of Tibetan culture and literature, thousands of Tibetan texts remain lost across continents. Can he complete his mission to collect and preserve this ancient literature and return these documents to a people still in exile?
Timeline
7/07 - 10/07 - Research and Development
10/15/07 - Preliminary interview shoot in NYC for development of sizzle
10/30/07 - Begin Preproduction, research and planning; Meetings with TBRC
1/08 - Gruber Foundation and Rubin Foundation to discuss levels of involvement
1/30/08 - Rough edit of sizzle completed
2/15/08 - Edit for version 2 Sizzle
3/08 - 6/08 - Meetings with TBRC to discuss shoot plans for India, Nepal and Bhutan
6/15/08 - Finalize Sizzle and full pitch materials for fundraising and grant applications
7/08 - Develop fundraising website, digitaldharma.com
09/17-30/08 - India/Nepal Shoot #1
11/22-11/30/08 - India Shoot #2
12/08 - Postproduction: Scripting
02/09 - Edit rough cut
03/09 - Secure broadcast outlet
04/09 - Edit to completion
04/09 - 06/09 - Marketing & Promotion
Treatment
The feature-length HD documentary would take a film approach to lighting and stylized composition. Use of a handheld camera will bring immediacy to the viewer’s involvement with Smith’s journey, as it is relived onsite in New Delhi and in monasteries in Bir (Hamal Pradesh) and Nepal. A “star-quality” narrator such as Richard Gere will provide additional narrative continuity. The tone and content of the narration will underscore the ironies that reside within it, such as how the writings of a peaceful culture became the center of a stormy controversy, or how someone who would do anything to avoid involvement in war became a determined warrior in his own quiet struggle against the obliteration of Tibetan culture.
The account of Smith’s mission will be keyed to the following chronology of events:
• 1959, Tibet-- Red Army invasion threatens to annihilate an ancient culture
• A Mormon from Utah, Gene Smith meets exiled Tibetan Lama, Deshung Rinpoche, who charges him to go to India and to seek out rare texts
• With sealed letters of introduction from Deshung to important lamas, Smith travels to India, Mongolia, and Bhutan
• In an era of espionage, paranoia and intrigue, Gene Smith gains access to two mistrustful cultures – Indian and Tibetan refugees
• Gene Smith allows his home to be used as a safe meeting place by Buddhists, academics, and leaders from all over Southeast Asia and the Western World with no political agenda
• Setting political precedent while working for the Library of Congress field office in New Delhi by manipulating an obscure American public law (PL480), Smith finds the funds to draw out Tibetans wary of exposing their smuggled texts, offering to help copy and restore their hidden treasures
• New technology fuels Smith’s mission: The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center
• (TBRC) is established to digitally preserve texts destined to be shared globally over the
• Internet while select canons (12,000 volumes) are stored on a palm-sized hard drive to be delivered to exiled Tibetans in remote monasteries
• Smith and his multigenerational team return the texts in digital form to remote monasteries in Mongolia, Bhutan, and Tibet
• Ongoing behind-closed-door negotiations with the Chinese and other governments are instrumental to completion of the mission
• 2008, E. Gene Smith returns to India to see the area then and now, through his eyes and the recounting of the era from on-location Interviews with renowned Buddist leader Dzongsar Khyentse Thubten Chökyi Gyamtso and French Philosopher Mathieu Ricard
• Gene will be introduced to the 12-year-old boy identified as the reincarnation of Deshung Rinpoche, the lama who inspired Gene’s 40-year mission to save a people, a culture, and a tradition.
Structure
Content and Creative Approach
It has been said that the greatest tragedy in nature is the extinction of a species. For human beings, a comparable catastrophe is the extinction of a culture. Yet we know that languages are dying at an alarming rate, with nearly half of all current human languages in danger of becoming extinct. And language is the most important bridge that that we have remaining to the true nature of some ancient cultures – language in the form of written documents that serve as a portal to the thought and practices of those cultures. A United Nations report states that as many as 95 percent of the world’s languages may face extinction by the end of this century due to increased globalization. K. David Harrison, author of When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge, speaks of the “catastrophe of cultural forgetting” that deprives us of insights into models of human thought different from our own. Indeed, if language is a reflection of a society’s relationship with its environment, the disappearance of a language means nothing less than the loss of a culture and the extensive latticework of traditions on which it was built.
E. Gene Smith, a Utah Mormon dedicated to pacifism, embarked on a difficult mission to prevent the disappearance of ancient Tibetan culture, as reflected in the thousands of ancient documents that were placed in grave jeopardy by the Red Army invasion of 1959. These documents represent 1500 years of invaluable teachings that chronicle the advances of humankind. In addition to the Tibetans’ original contributions, these documents include the traditional works of the great Indian scholars and masters, which were systematically documented and preserved in Tibet. Smith’s struggle to save these documents, encourage their translation, and make their contents available to the public, provides a model for the use of personal networking and digital technology to save the priceless remnants of unique ancient cultures threatened by extinction in an increasingly global society.
Most of the narrative thread will be told through interviews and a retracing of Smith’s own journey, which begins in Seattle with his introduction to Deshung Rinpoche, the lama who inspired him to undertake this mission.
Target Audience
Digital Dharma brings to light the magnitude of one man’s 40-year inspirational journey to save the literary history of a disappearing culture and to preserve early lessons of mankind’s consciousness. It will expand viewers’ understanding of the humanitarian and academic efforts necessary to protect all cultures.
The broadcast documentary and then online interactive will be designed to inform and engage academics, policy makers, teachers, and university and high school students worldwide interested in Tibetan, Buddhist and Sanskrit history, new technologies, digital preservation and American and global initiatives to rescue cultural literacy.
Many existing text preservation websites are accessible only through university enrollment. Very few have public access or multimedia interaction geared to a wider audience of academics, hobbyists and young students involved in the exchange of knowledge between technology and humanitarian and cultural preservation.
Digital Dharma, as a multimedia experience that chronicles a cultural rescue and offers an adventurous educational exchange, will also be designed such that it is embraced by the public at large. The Documentary and collected components form the production phase not used in the final edit, such as additional interviews, environment moving and still images, can be restructured and programmed to become part of a more in-depth and targeted school curriculum and museum experience.
Production Personnel
Dafna Yachin, Executive Producer/Director/Writer
Don Creamer, Executive Producer
Tamela Knapp, Producer/Writer
Shernaz Italia, Line Producer - India
Brad Smith, Director of Photography - USA
Wade Muller, Director of Photography - India
Tim Gates, Final Cut Editor
Justin Menzel, Online Editor
Art Fischman, Writer/Educational Design
Andrea Bitai, Art Director and Graphic Design
Matt Ambler, Graphic Design
Kevin Malone, Assistant Editor
Duncan McCloud Frazier, Associate Producer/Researcher
Danielle Wells, Researcher
Kevin Di Salvo, Researcher
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