Helping Tibetans See the Light

In the Buddhist tradition, clear vision is associated with knowledge, wisdom and a pure soul. So it is an ironic and cruel fate that in Tibet, a country where the Buddhist religion pervades all aspects of life, over 10 percent of the population are stricken by blindness due to cataracts. In Visioning Tibet, a documentary screening at Duke tonight, filmmaker Isaac Solotaroff chronicles the efforts of Dr. Marc Lieberman, an American who has made it his mission to restore sight to the Tibetans.

The film follows Lieberman and his decade-long Tibet Vision Project, in which he not only operates on cataract victims, but also provides Tibetans with the skills to perform future operations themselves. "It boggles the mind to think how anyone could survive there or even flourish," Solotaroff said of the harsh Tibetan landscape.

One of Solotaroff's main attractions to the project was "this idea of this place that seems to be the end of the earth, hasn't been touched by globalization," he said. In fact, "the location where the film was shot has been inaccessible to visitors since the Chinese invasion." Yet this same element of attraction made for an arduous filmmaking process. Physically, Solotaroff and his one-man crew felt the fatigue of filming at 13,000 feet in the desert sun. More challenging, however, was gaining access to the country as a foreign media crew without interference from the Chinese government. Although Lieberman's positive relationship with the officials helped, Solotaroff was often forced to think on his feet. "I told them I was shooting a home movie and that I was Marc [Lieberman]'s nephew and that my shooter, who was 15 years older and looked nothing like me, was my brother," he said.

But for Solotaroff, the self-financed labor of love was worth all the strife. "I think it goes a long way to help remind Americans what our role should be in the rest of the world." He describes it as a portrait of "cross-cultural cooperation" intended to motivate Americans to action abroad. The film has found a national forum: currently screening at festivals, it will have a limited theatrical run in New York in November before its television premiere on PBS in May 2006.

Visioning Tibet comes to Duke tonight after a series of successful presentations at schools such as Harvard Unviersity. "It's a film that appeals to people who are idealistic and are committed to that vision, and that's a message that resonates better with young people," Solotaroff said. Unfortunately, personal circumstances prevent Solotaroff from making his scheduled performance at tonight's screening. Still, the film itself provides a clear picture of a foreign issue that Americans, and even Duke students, have the power to combat.

Visioning Tibet will be screened at Griffith film theatre tonight at 7 p.m.