Monk with a Camera, a documentary about the life and photographic artwork of the Tibetan Buddhist monk Nicholas Vreeland (Khen Rinpoche), will premiere on 21 November at New York City’s Lincoln Center. The 7.20 p.m. screening will include a Q&A session with Khen Rinpoche and directors Tina Mascara and Guido Santi, while at the 5.20 p.m. screening the following day Khen Rinpoche and Richard Gere will have a public conversation about the film. Khen Rinpoche is the name that Nicholas Vreeland has gone by since 2012.
Still shot from film showing Khen Rinpoche with his camera. From asphalt-stars.squarespace.com
The logline of the film is one of engaging interest: “Like the Prince Siddhartha, Nicholas Vreeland walked away from a worldly life of privilege to pursue the Buddhist ideal. Once a promising photographer, he moved to India and became a Tibetan monk. Years later, he returns to photography to help his community of monks.”
Vreeland comes from a family that is involved in the fashion industry. His grandmother was none other than Diana Vreeland, an editor for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. The film documents Vreeland’s journey from his days as a dilettante in New York to becoming the first Westerner in history to be put in charge of a large Buddhist monastery in the holy country of India. The common thread running through the film is his love of photography, his struggle to accept that love, and finally, finding that love a redeeming quality for his path as a Buddhist.
A photo from Khen Rinpoche's album, "Return to the Roof of the World." From nicholasvreeland.com
Born in Switzerland, Vreeland moved to New York City at the age of 13. Shortly after moving to the United States he was sent to boarding school, which was not to his taste. His escape and life raft proved to be photography. He became close with his grandmother, Diana, while studying film in his early 20s. She introduced him to Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, who would be his mentors in photography. It was also Avedon who brought him to the world of Tibetan Buddhism through his introduction to Khyongla Rato Rinpoche. In 1985, Vreeland found himself leaving New York to study the way of the Buddha at Rato Monastery in India.
Poster for the film "Monk with a Camera." From monk-with-a-camera-one-sheet-low-rez.jpg
Having completed his Geshe degree Vreeland moved back to the United States, where he helped to write several books in English for the Dalai Lama, including An Open Heart: Practicing with a Compassionate Mind (2005), which was a New York Times best-seller, and A Profound Mind (2011). In 2008, when the economic crash in the West caused donations to Buddhist centers to all but dry up, Vreeland offered up his own photographs to help Rato Monastery, raising over US$400,000 to support and renovate it. He was appointed its abbot in 2012, at which time the Dalai Lama gave him the instruction to “bridge the Tibetan tradition and the Western world.”
The film itself was produced by Asphalt Stars Productions and directed by Mascara and Santi, who also directed Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007). It is an unpretentious film employing photographs, a deliberately simple ‘70s-style narrative animation, archive film clips, and contemporary documentary footage to build a narrative of Vreeland’s extraordinary life. The film has been showing at special openings and film festivals for almost a year, but is now being given a wider theatrical release.