Dear Friends,

Warm greetings from the Guna Foundation! We hope this finds you all well and thriving in this dynamic, if not tumultuous, year of the Iron Tiger.

It’s been almost a year since our Shojin Riyori benefit dinner. We would like to share with you our progress and achievements since then, and also announce our special upcoming event, A Brighter Vision of Tibetan Culture on October 8th.

We are delighted to report that we have made considerable headway toward the completion of our film documentary, which chronicles forty years of historic accomplishments of Tarthang Tulku and his students to preserve Tibetan culture.

Our first step in establishing Guna was to build an informative website to share our story. Next, we outfitted our studio with quality equipment in order to become a first class archival and multi-media center.

Our state-of-the-art Apple computer systems allowed us to reach our first milestone: the archiving and logging of our community’s vast collection of photo and audio-visual materials amassed over the past forty years.

Having reached these goals, we sponsored two of our volunteers to participate in a photography class and a weeklong seminar on oral histories to move towards our goal of becoming self sufficient in documentary film production.

Recognizing that the Guna team has talent and promise, we recently purchased a Canon 5D camera and equipment, enabling us to film in the most pristine high definition.

We are now truly ready and beginning to make headway towards the goal of producing a full length documentary. We are eager to share all of our progress with our community at A Brighter Vision.

A Brighter Vision, our second annual benefit event, will be held on October 8th at our Guna studio in downtown Berkeley. This special evening will feature short documentaries, a portfolio of beautiful photographs for sale of Don Nelson’s recent trip to Mt. Kailash, and a silent auction filled with unique items and opportunities. Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served. If you’re in the Bay Area, please come and enjoy a festive evening with us.

To learn more, and see all of the auction items, please visit www.gunafoundation.org/brightervision.

Oral Histories
Capturing Family Memories

I’m very excited in particular about one of the items we’re offering at our silent auction – oral family histories.

This summer, I had the opportunity to learn the art of the oral history interview from Howard Levin at the Urban School in San Francisco. For decades, Mr. Levin has been leading his Telling Their Stories project, which lets high school (and sometimes adult) students interview elderly people with remarkable life stories. The videos of these interviews are archived and made available to the public online, and the results are astounding – see for yourself at www.tellingstories.org.

Inspired by this experience, Guna is auctioning personal oral family histories at A Brighter Vision. To truly listen to a person’s story is an incredibly moving and often surprising experience. It reveals unseen facets of their soul, and gives a fascinating glimpse into history as it was lived. We’re offering to interview your loved one, record their most remarkable memories and present you with an edited high definition video that will last for countless generations.

If you’d like to find out more, you can go to www.gunafoundation.org/brightervision, send me an email at grega@gunafoundation.org, or come and talk to me at the Brighter Vision event, where I’ll be answering questions about oral family histories. - Greg Armstrong