Watch A Gift for the Village

The film tells the story of the long connection between a Blacksburg, Virginia, artist and a prominent Buddhist lama and healer from the culturally Tibetan region of Western Nepal. In June of 2007 a team carried a large and beautiful painting, called a thangka, to a village in the Himalayas, and the village held a festival to celebrate its arrival. The film was made with the blessings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Jane Lillian Vance was the first female and westerner to complete such a painting. The film team traveled to sacred sites including a recently discovered Himalayan cave of ancient Buddhist paintings, and documented a traditional way of life that is disappearing with the arrival of roads and electricity to the region. Public Radio's Lisa Mullins narrates this story about a cultural bridge constructed over a decade between the homes of Amchi Tsampa Ngawang Lama, and Jane Lillian Vance, and the bond of friendship that spans two cultures , through collaboration and through mourning, as the American film team reeled in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech campus shootings. Winner of Best Documentary and People's Choice Award - Virginia Indie Film Festival Official Selection: Virginia Film Festival Appalachian Film Festival Honolulu Film Awards Southern Appalachian Film Festival SouthArts Southern Circuit Independent Filmmakers Tour 2010 Tom Landon, Jenna Swann, Jane Vance Lucky Dog Productions, Roanoke, VA www.agiftforthevillage.com www.agiftforthevillage.blogspot.com Marketing and Promotion by Stephanie Koehler, SAK Intermedia, Roanoke, VA

A Gift for the Village is a 2012 documentary with a runtime of 56 minutes. It has received moderate reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.0.