The Brown & White

A documentary will chronicle the events surrounding the Dalai Lama's visit to Lehigh.

Steve Lichak, senior media production specialist for Library and Technology Services, is producing the film along with Zeke Zelker, an independent filmmaker with Independence Dream Machine.

"The real purpose is to document the university's preparation - spiritually, educationally and even the fundamental basics of what it takes to host the Dalai Lama here in July," Lichak said.

The documentary will cover the preparations for his visit including the coursework, lectures, public talks, Buddhist philosophy and the China-Tibet controversy.

"Our main goal was to engage the students," Zelker said. "We wanted it to unravel organically instead of being a big high production number."

To involve the students, the documentary will feature student perspective about the upcoming visit.

"It should offer a nice balance, from the completely absurd to deep and introspective," Lichak said. "It should be a nice well-rounded feature when it's done."

For the film's two main producers, the project has been an exercise in adaptation.

"We've never met or worked together before this point," Zelker said. "Right now we're working pretty much independently, but in the weeks prior to his [the Dalai Lama's] arrival we'll start working more intimately together."

In their time apart, Zelker has been doing most of the off-campus work, Lichak said.

"He's been doing stuff on the road, going outside and grabbing interviews from students and professors," Lichak said. "He also visited the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in New Jersey."

Documentaries are not a planned science like a feature film. Zelker said the biggest challenge for him has been the lack of structure, and that if events come up, the producers will need to deal with them.

The ongoing China-Tibet conflict is one of those circumstances.

"If something dramatic happens with the China-Tibet situation, we don't know where we're going with it," Lichak said. "It's cinema veritae: shoot everything first and figure out what happened later."

The Dalai Lama will be arriving at Lehigh July 10, where he will teach for six days at Stabler Arena on Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment: The Lamrim Chenmo.