2024 Viehbeck, Markus, director. Resounding the Buddha’s Sūtras. Tibetan Manuscript Project Vienna, 2024. 22 mins. https://doi.org/10.25365/phaidra.609
This film documents a public reading of sūtra volumes in the Tarap Valley, Dolpo, a remote and structurally weak area in the Himalayan borderlands between Nepal and Tibet, conducted in May 2023. By giving voice to local stakeholders of Buddhist manuscript collections, it sheds light on the social life of written artefacts. The film is produced by the Tibetan Manuscript Project Vienna (TMPV), a long-term research initiative dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and research of Tibetan Buddhist canonical manuscript collections.
2019 Interview with Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen, the head of Nesar Monastery, conducted at Nesar Monastery, Upper Dolpo, in September 2019. The interview was conducted by Markus Viehbeck and Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, filmed by Jigme Lodroe.
In the first part of the interview, Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen answers questions regarding the general history of the monastery and its manuscript collections as well as his experiences on issues of cultural preservation in the region.
In the second part of the video, Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen discusses more specific questions about the production of Tibetan manuscripts, the materials being used, and the agents that are involved.
We would like to thank Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen for sharing his knowledge as well as his daughter Tashi Bhuti who kindly acted as a translator.
2019 “Off the Mainstream: Tracing a Network of Sūtra Collections across the Himalayas,” a lecture by Markus Viehbeck given for The Buddhist Forum series at SOAS. The lecture provides an overview of the scope of the Tibetan Manuscript Project Vienna and discusses preliminary findings of the current research work. The recording of the talk was produced by SOAS and is available on YouTube.