This is a film made probably during the early 2000s about the Tibetan art of storytelling, which is known as Lama Mani, and the attempts to preserve and revive the art form.
The Lama Mani is a storytelling technique that is used to illustrate the Buddhist view of the universe, including ethics and cosmology, often told with thangkas as visual supports.
This film follows the progress of one storyteller, Bhuchen Gyurmey, as he travels to Kathmandu where he teaches 45 nuns the art at the Thukche Choeling Nunnery, and it closes with the nuns themselevs putting on a Lama Mani performance.
We see everywhere across the Buddhist world that the traditional arts are being lost, and replaced by such things as video games, films and instant video, which lack the ethical foundations, and often as not teach the wrong lessons to their audience.
If we can value our cultures and our way of expressing out cultures higher, then maybe there is a chance they will survive and be of interest in the coming generations. Otherwise we are facing a cultural death, and will lose the values we treasure along with it.
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to see an album of stills click here