Sunday was the second anniversary of the death of E. Gene Smith, who founded the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. In Chengdu, the Southwest University for Nationalities marked the date with a ceremony in which they presented khatas to Smith’s statue and shared stories and remembrances of Smith. Read More
Digital Dharma, a documentary about the late Tibetologist E. Gene Smith, is screening at the Rubin Museum in New York City every Wednesday through September 5. The film, directed by Dafna Yachin, documents how Smith, a Mormon from Ogden, Utah, came to find, preserve, and digitize over 20,000 volumes of Tibetan religious texts.
The film will also be shown at the International Documentary Association’s upcoming DocuWeeks festivals, which run from August 10 to 16 in Los Angeles and August 17 to 23 in New York. Show times and tickets are available here. Through the festival, Digital Dharma will be eligible for Academy Award consideration, but since the IDA is nonprofit, the filmmakers need to pay a co-op fee to participate. They’re hoping to raise $25,000 to cover the fee and pay for a master print as well as marketing and promotion; you can contribute to their fundraising campaign here. After the jump, watch a trailer for Digital Dharma. Read More
The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) has moved from the Rubin Museum of Art to a new office space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right in Harvard Square. The TBRC was originally founded by the late Tibetan scholar E. Gene Smith in Cambridge back in 1999.
According to a recent blog post on the move, TBRC is excited to announce that they have started a new internship program in collaboration with the Harvard Divinity School and the Department of South Asian Studies at Harvard. They’ve also set up a kiosk and seminar room on site for visitors and students, to assist them in their research. Read More
E. Gene Smith and colleagues in a still from the film
When the eighteenth annual Sedona International Film Festival opens next week, the audience will get a sneak peek at Philadelphia director Dafna Yachin’s feature-length documentary, Digital Dharma — the documentary film that Buddhadharma News readers recently got to preview.
The film tells the story of unlikely hero E. Gene Smith, a Mormon from Utah who, it has been said, saved Tibetan Buddhism. Read More
The makers of Digital Dharma, the documentary about the late, legendary Tibetologist E. Gene Smith — learn all about it, and him, in our previous coverage, including film clips and more — report: “We already have thousands of dollars backed on our Kickstarter campaign to help cover the costs of completing the score, sound mix and color correction for the feature-length film, but we will also need funds to edit the 52-minute broadcast version that will be distributed globally.
But unless we raise another $11,332 in the next 65 hours, we may have nothing to distribute.” Click here to pitch in.
Last month we shared clips from Digital Dharma, the documentary-in-progress from filmmaker Dafna Yachin, about E. Gene Smith, who spent fifty years finding, preserving, and digitizing more than 20,000 volumes of ancient Tibetan Buddhist text. It’s an incredible story, well told, but the film will only be completed if Dafna can raise $30,000 through a Kickstarter campaign. She’s currently close to $9000, but has only 2 weeks to raise the remaining $21,000. Without your support, the story of Gene and the struggle to save Tibetan texts and culture will not be told. Want to help? Click here to contribute to the Kickstarter campaign — and see clips from the movie.
We’ve been talking a lot about the late E. Gene Smith here this week; now there’s related breaking news, by way of Jeff Wallman, Executive Director of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (of which the legendary Smith was the founder):
“On behalf of the Board of Directors of TBRC, I am pleased to announce TBRC is moving our US office in the coming year 2012. In order to expand on our success and further develop our resources, we will relocate our research, text preservation and administrative operations to the Cambridge/Boston area, where we can take advantage of the rich opportunities in Tibetan studies and information technology at universities and research institutions there. Read More
Our private screening contest is over — congratulations, Michael Dorfman! — but there’s still a bit more Digital Dharma to share with you. That is, we’re offering two more exclusive clips from the documentary about E. Gene Smith, who died one year ago this Friday. Watch them below. We also hope you’ll consider honoring Gene’s memory and mission of preserving and digitizing irreplaceable Tibetan Buddhist texts by contributing to Digital Dharma’s Kickstarter campaign. Read More
Buddhadharma News is pleased to present more exclusive clips from Digital Dharma, the documentary about the life and work of the late, legendary Tibetologist E. Gene Smith. (December 16 will mark the one-year anniversary of Gene’s passing.) Click through here to watch two new clips — “The Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center” and “Matthieu Ricard and Gene Smith” — and for links to previous clips, as well as info on how you can win your own private Digital Dharma screening.* Read More
E. Gene Smith examines a text in this still from "Digital Dharma."
On December 15, 2011, noting the first anniversary of the passing of legendary Tibetologist E. Gene Smith, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation will celebrate his life and host a private screening of the documentary about Smith, Digital Dharma — an epic story of cultural rescue, and how one man’s mission became the catalyst for an international movement to provide free access to the story of a people.
Thanks to the people behind the film, we’re able to share exclusive video clips — and offer you the chance to have a Digital Dharma screening* of your own. Click through for details and to watch an exclusive Digital Dharma clip — “Gene Smith and his legendary collection of books” — the first of several to be hosted here on Buddhadharma News. Read More
Earlier this month, the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, Netherlands, hosted a conference celebrating E. Gene Smith’s life and contributions to Tibetan Studies. There the late Tibetologist was granted a posthumous Doctorate in Philosophy.
Additionally, the Association for Asian Studies has created the new, annual E. Gene Smith Inner Asia Book Prize, honoring “outstanding and innovative scholarship across discipline and country of specialization for a book on Inner Asia published during the preceding year.” Read More
Photo by Elihu Genmyo Smith
In this adaptation from his book, Zen Master Who? A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen, James Ishmael Ford concisely places the life and work of the late Charlotte Joko Beck (left) into context.
The Ordinary Mind School was among the first Zen communities to consciously engage the emotional life and the shadows of the human mind as Zen practice. The late Charlotte Joko Beck and her dharma heirs adapted elements of the vipassana tradition — a relentless inquiry into the contours of the human mind — as unambiguous Zen discipline. Read More
Bust of E. Gene Smith from the library that honors his work (Photo via Lunchbox Communications)
On June 01, 2011, the Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu, China, held the opening of the E. Gene Smith Library. The library opening coincided with the university’s 60th anniversary celebration. Southwest University for Nationalities is located in the Sichuan province and has a strong Tibetology research program, as well as a focus on minority education. [More, with links to our extensive coverage of Smith's life, work, and passing, after the jump.] Read More
