Digital Dharma

Digital Dharma

Gene Smith was born in Utah and raised a Mormon. After studying science and anthropology, Smith relies on an interest and ability in obscure languages to avoid the Vietnam-era draft. While studying Sanskrit and Tibetan at the University of Washington, he takes up Tibetan Buddhism as an academic pursuit and offers to help Tibetan refugees - brought to the U.S. to teach - to assimilate into American life. He is assigned to live with the family of Deshung Rinpoche, one of the most learned lamas to escape Tibet. Smith teaches English to Deshung, and Deshung teaches Smith about Tibetan culture and Buddhism. In 1959, Red Army Soldiers destroy thousands of homes and temples. Tibetan refugees are forced to leave behind countless artifacts, the sole evidence of their culture. A 1500-year literary tradition, in Sanskrit and Tibetan, is in danger of disappearing. Smith travels through India, Bhutan and Nepal...

Runtime
1h 30m
Director
Dafna Yachin

Interesting facts

Digital Dharma: One Man's Mission to Save a Culture is a 2012 American documentary film directed by Dafna Yachin. The film depicts the 50-year journey by E. Gene Smith to hunt down and digitize over 20,000 missing volumes of ancient Tibetan text.

Production

As covered by Documentary Magazine, Director Dafna Yachin first met Smith while filming a documentary about philanthropist Peter Gruber. Once she came to understand the scope and importance of Smith's quest, she received his permission to follow him back to India and Nepal to capture his delivery of the first 12,000 digitized texts he had salvaged.

Filming while travelling was demanding. Yachin said, “Delhi was our most difficult place. It’s crowded, and with shooting around the historic monuments, people can give you some issues if you don’t pay the government.”

Raising money for ongoing production was a constant concern. According to Boulder Weekly, the filmmaker said, "Nobody wants to hear a story about a librarian," which made the film a "tough sell." A variety of fundraising methods were used to continue filming, including donations from organizations, individuals, and web platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

In 2010, while still filming, the film's main subject, E. Gene Smith, died. This caused the director to reconsider the production schedule. Said Yachin, "The sudden death of E. Gene Smith in December 2010 underscored my urgency to tell Gene’s remarkable story as soon as possible." Of her hope for the finished film, Yachin stated:With this feature film, I want viewers to quickly move from asking why to wanting to learn how: how Gene's ultimate mis…

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended