Bryan Campbell filming in India. Photo by Celi Birke.
(Photo: Submitted)
It took Honors College student Bryan Campbell nine months to
distill 44 hours of video footage into a 30-minute film that documents University
of Arkansas students’ encounter with India and the Tibetans who live there in
exile. Campbell will present his video for the first time at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 1, in Giffels Auditorium.
Abroad Horizon follows
two Honors College students, Celi Birke and Bobby Howard, who traveled to
Dharamsala, India, last summer to meet Tibetans in exile and document their
stories. This
opportunity came through the TEXT Program (Tibetans in Exile Today), an oral
history project led by Sidney Burris, director of the Fulbright College Honors
Program and professor of English, and Geshe Thupten Dorjee, a humanities
instructor in Fulbright College.
“The trip was about the Tibetans’ struggle, but I wanted to
capture the students’ experience,” Campbell said. “Really, what I wanted to see
was how the students were changed by the experience.”
Campbell chronicled every aspect of the trip, from the
students’ excitement in videotaping Tibetan leader Tenzin Tsundue to dorm room pranks. Campbell was rarely without his
video camera during the three-week trip.
“You shoot as much as you can, and then you refine. It was
impossible to plan ahead; I always had to be on my toes,” he said.
Campbell is pursuing a broadcast major and history minor in
the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. He works for UA
Productions, where he has created several videos, but says this is his most
ambitious effort to date.
“I’ve worked on this since August, but haven’t kept a
sequence made before last December,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot.”
Campbell received an Honors College Study Abroad Grant in support
of his trip to India.