In June 2006, the Kham Film Project traveled to eastern Tibet to document regions of growing interest to tourists. We set out fulfill three primary goals with our footage:

1) Highlight various social, cultural, and historical aspects of communites that might be of interest to potential tourists.

2) Obtain a historical record of rapidly changing locales.

3) Train Khampa Tibetans in video documentation as a means of executing the first two goals with an empowered Khampa perspective.

The scope of our fieldwork covered 20 primary locations over a period of 60 days. Highlights include:

• Derge Parkhang Printing Press – One of the oldest active printing presses in Tibet still producing texts in all four schools of Buddhist thought.
• Dzogchen Gompa – Eastern Tibet’s most popular monastery among Chinese Buddhists.
• Dzongzar – A remote village where community leaders have made a concerted effort to establish institutions that encourage economic growth and preserve Tibetan culture. The small community is home to a collection of schools that provide training in traditional Tibetan pottery, weaving, sculpture, metallurgy, and tanka painting, as well as a facility that manufactures Tibetan medicine.
• Ya-Chen – The largest nomadic religious community in the world, made up of an estimated 6500 nuns. The summer festival there draws thousands of nomadic Tibetans together in celebration.

Additionally, we completed a number of participatory and collaborative projects, including the following:

• Clean Sweep – A collaborative documentary made by students of the Chungba Primary School and a facilitator from the Maysles Institute team. Clean Sweep depicts the Chungba Primary School’s bi-annual day of litter removal and town cleanup.
• Making Good Choices – A participatory project, conceived and executed from start to finish by a group of six students from the Chungba Primary School. This short narrative film illustrates the personal and environmental dangers of alcohol and cigarette smoking.
• Sherpa Training – The larger Kham Geotourism Project invited a team of experienced Sherpas from Nepal to train Tibetan nomads in guiding alpine treks. The training took place as a series of modules covering mountaineering skills, safety, etiquette, and food preparation.
  Our documentation of the lessons will be compiled onto a DVD for distribution among Tibetan nomadic communities.