Growing up, I was surrounded by Buddhists. My parents were heavily involved in the local Peace Pagoda, one of the only two fully chartered Japanese temples of its kind in the United States. My father, a chef, would cook large and decadent meals for the monks and their supporters while my mother assisted in the organization and planning of many of their events. As a child in this environment, I was often exposed to things that most people my age could only have imagined. My parents chauffeured around Thich Nhat Hanh and other prestigious Buddhist figures in our minivan and I even brought nuns and monks into school for show and tell.
The town I grew up in, Amherst, Massachusetts, was well known for its involvement with the Free Tibet Movement. Renowned Indo-Tibetan professor Robert Thurman taught at Amherst College, my high school, Northfield Mount Hermon, and invited various Buddhist laureates to serve as visiting speakers. Even Richard Gere, Mr. Tibet himself, went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The town’s interest in Tibetan and Buddhist themed issues eventually led to the community serving as a safe ground for exiles and refugees escaping China’s proliferation of Tibet. The Dalai Lama himself would come on occasional visits to captivate the community.
This type of community allowed me to develop a strong interest not just in Buddhist-themed issues, but also in studying different cultures in general. When I was 17, I had the chance to travel to the land of my ancestors, Ireland, as part of a high school independent program I created to study the religious conflict in Northern Ireland, which has plagued the island for centuries. While there I had a small video camera, which I used to document the experience. After returning home, my peers, particularly those in the Buddhist community were passionate about my work and pushed me to continue pursuing my newfound interest in filmmaking.
It became natural for me to continue this kind of work. At 19, I spent part of the summer living on the Choctaw American Indian Reservation in Mississippi. While there I produced a documentary about their economic growth and preservation of culture. While in college and graduate school I continued making movies, hoping all along to at some day do a film about the people I grew up surrounded by.
In and around Amherst there are many Tibetan themed gift shops. Some of them are quite exploitive, selling small trinkets and overpriced mementos produced in back alley sweatshops somewhere in Nepal, even including a store owned and operated by a white man who employs borderline Tibetan slave labor in the cultivation and promotion of his items.
That being said, there are some stores that actually serve a great purpose. One store, Glimpse of Tibet, is run by a close friend of my mother who was formerly a Tibetan nomad and now spends her time in exile between India and Northampton, Massachusetts. My mother’s friend knew of my interest in film and suggested I consider traveling to Tibet to do a film about a community of nomads she knew who were working to start a school for their children as a means of preserving their ancient traditions. The project interested me considering its close connection to the film I did on the Choctaw Reservation.
The one problem in doing this kind of work is that we often become too idealistic. There is a trap that many filmmakers get caught up in believing they can do what they choose without understanding the necessary steps and possible consequences. I soon learned that my trip to join the nomads in Tibet would be out of the question considering visa issues. I knew the likelihood of me, a young aspiring filmmaker, being allowing into Tibet were close to none. Despite this inability to travel there, it remained a dream of mine to produce a film over there. I knew that at some point in my life, I would have a chance to go.
More to come…
