In the Summer of 2004, I was invited by Lama Norlha Rinpoche, the abbot of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Upstate New York, to join him on his regular visit to his homeland of Nangchen, in remote northeastern Tibet. I was familiar with his humanitarian efforts in Nangchen, where he had been a young monk before his monastery was destroyed and he escaped to India in 1958. "Come make a film about how my people have lived for centuries, before it all changes," he said. So in July 2004, my bag full of protein bars and my veins full of hepatitis vaccine, off we went.
If we likened Tibet's most media-documented and commonly touristed city of Lhasa to Manhattan, Nangchen would be located somewhere in the mountains of Wyoming. It is a remote and rural area with an average altitude of 14,000 feet, situated along the source of the Mekong River. Since 1986, Lama Norlha Rinpoche has created schools for children and established medical clinics there, and rebuilt the Korche Monastery of his childhood. In 1990, he founded Kala Rongo Monastery exclusively for nuns, and later, one of the only monastic colleges for women in all of Tibet. These were the most radical of all his projects, and were met locally with great controversy and skepticism – Why did women need to be educated? Why did they need to practice Buddhism full time? What could a group of nuns possibly contribute to the community? And that was clearly the story I wanted to tell.
From my Western feminist viewpoint, the subservient role of Tibetan women was a travesty, though sadly not at all uncommon in the world. I was therefore eager to meet a group of empowered nuns who had broken free of their gender constraints and were taking their futures into their own hands. Instead, I found only the tiniest beginnings of anything resembling what we would define as a 'feminist revolution' at Kala Rongo. The nuns were much more reserved and shy than I had expected, more grateful and diligent about the opportunities given them than fierce or outspoken. But in their own way, they were completely fulfilled and liberated by their chosen path. So when I finally abandoned my pre-conceived notions about what radical social change should look like, I discovered the power of their transformation-in-progress in the subtleties of their personal stories.
This is how DAUGHTERS OF WISDOM came to be an experiential presentation of the nuns, told in their own words from their particular place of freedom and choice that they experience on their own terms.
As far as the filmmaking itself, we had a crew of three: cinematographer Gena Konstantinakos; local translator Tsering Yuldron, who got quick lessons in being a production assistant, and myself. We did not have official permits to film, but because we were traveling with Lama Norlha Rinpoche, who has high spiritual ranking and a pragmatic working relationship with the Nangchen authorities, we were mostly left to ourselves. Traveling with him was a lot like I imagine it would be like to travel with the Pope. People came out of their tents and houses, from over hills and up from valleys to greet his passing car and receive a blessing from him. Being part of his entourage, we were welcomed and granted intimate access to everyone we came in contact with.
At 14,000 feet, carrying a tripod up even a small staircase was a chore, and the nuns enjoyed teasing us about our huffing and puffing. Even with our fancy hiking boots, climbing up the steep mountains took us four hours of strenuous effort compared to the half hour the nuns (who I am sure are part mountain goat) take in their tennis shoes. Our first week, the headphone jack on our camera went dead and we could not monitor sound, though fortunately, there weren't the usual white noise and radio interferences to worry about in a place with no electricity. We had six 8-hour camera batteries which got charged about once a week when someone was going into the nearby town. Dust got inside the lens (and everywhere else) that wouldn't come out, and we became limited in our ability to shoot toward light.
There were mice crawling across us to get to the cheese storage room on the other side of our sleeping quarters. There was a lot of rice and sautéed green vegetables with no nutritional value, and rancid butter. There were sudden hail and snow storms. There was a lot of waiting, and waiting, and waiting. And an abundance of kindness and generosity and openness and patience on the part of our subjects as they got used to our question after question that forced them to reflect on their lives probably for the first time. (At first, the nuns were coy even at the request of their names, before they explained that "It’s weird to say our names. We never do it.") We always invited our subjects to ask us questions as well, which usually ran along the lines of "How many yaks does your family have?" and "How many of your family members do you live with?"
Upon our return home, the task of translating the 80 hours we had shot was monumental. Numerous local translators tried without success to understand the micro-micro-dialect the nuns spoke. Eventually, we sent the footage back to Tibet where we were helped by two fellow students of our field interpreter Tsering. Carla Ruff edited for five months, with a few follow-up 'tweak' sessions.
In the end, my intention is to present to audience members the direct experience of the lives of others being lived simultaneously but very differently from their own, and through that, to remind us that constructed social and political ideologies should always defer to the authenticity of humanity, and not visa-versa. I think that this is the single most powerful unifying force we have in this time of unrest and uncertainty throughout the world, and the nuns of Kala Rongo have much to teach us about it.
- By Bari Pearlman, Director, Daughters of Wisdom (Ironweed Films: Volume 36: November 2008) For more information, visit www.ironweedfilms.com/films.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Considering Democracy & Policy Solutions by Keya Lea Horiuchi
Thank you for the opportunity to blog with Ironweed Films and thank you for the opportunity to be included in your lineup of (fabulous!) films.
“Considering Democracy” is a film that I hope will continue to widen the scope of debate in the United States as we look toward solutions. I feel that we are at a tremendous and momentous time within the United States of America. We are at the threshold of it all. As we go forward, we must do so as a country. Yet it seems that as individuals in America, we are divided, based upon the sources of our information.
During the same time that the film went out on Ironweed Films, I was touring the country, driving to different communities, screening “Considering Democracy” and having questions and discussion afterward. I found that there is currently a lot of emotion, together with polarization, along with a tremendous desire to define and work towards policy solutions that work for the People in America. It’s quite a combination. I think that change does need to come from the People, and with that, I think that it is up to us, as regular people in society, to begin discussing issues and policy with one another.
“Considering Democracy” offers a comparison of the U.S. to other developed countries, along with points of view from abroad. As I worked on the editing process, there was an earlier edition of the film that showed just the foreign point of view. People who looked at the early edition said that while it was interesting, they didn’t know if any of what people said abroad, was true. Thus, the research began and currently appears as quick bits of information throughout the film. I also looked at why the U.S. is drastically different in its policy than all the other developed democracies. The introductory segments with the weaver and the questions at the end of each section were a way to structure the film so that each chapter began and ended in a similar way. People have asked me if I want people to ask the questions, verbatim, to representatives, and while I do want people to be actively engaged in the political process after representatives are elected, I really want people to think about the issues.
It is my hope that the film can act as a catalyst to get people thinking about possible solutions. We must also be aware of the current political structure and how the system interacts with it. Once we vote our representatives into office, the lobbying mechanism will swing into action. The policy solutions are out there, but there will be a resistance from people who listen exclusively to conservative media formats. We need to begin to build bridges to these people. Please consider sharing your Ironweed films with other friends who might have different informational sources. Thank you for taking a look at the film.
- by Keya Lea Horiuchi, Director, Considering Democracy: 8 Things to Ask Your Representative (Ironweed Films Volume 35: October 2008) For more information, visit http://www.ironweedfilms.com
“Considering Democracy” is a film that I hope will continue to widen the scope of debate in the United States as we look toward solutions. I feel that we are at a tremendous and momentous time within the United States of America. We are at the threshold of it all. As we go forward, we must do so as a country. Yet it seems that as individuals in America, we are divided, based upon the sources of our information.
During the same time that the film went out on Ironweed Films, I was touring the country, driving to different communities, screening “Considering Democracy” and having questions and discussion afterward. I found that there is currently a lot of emotion, together with polarization, along with a tremendous desire to define and work towards policy solutions that work for the People in America. It’s quite a combination. I think that change does need to come from the People, and with that, I think that it is up to us, as regular people in society, to begin discussing issues and policy with one another.
“Considering Democracy” offers a comparison of the U.S. to other developed countries, along with points of view from abroad. As I worked on the editing process, there was an earlier edition of the film that showed just the foreign point of view. People who looked at the early edition said that while it was interesting, they didn’t know if any of what people said abroad, was true. Thus, the research began and currently appears as quick bits of information throughout the film. I also looked at why the U.S. is drastically different in its policy than all the other developed democracies. The introductory segments with the weaver and the questions at the end of each section were a way to structure the film so that each chapter began and ended in a similar way. People have asked me if I want people to ask the questions, verbatim, to representatives, and while I do want people to be actively engaged in the political process after representatives are elected, I really want people to think about the issues.
It is my hope that the film can act as a catalyst to get people thinking about possible solutions. We must also be aware of the current political structure and how the system interacts with it. Once we vote our representatives into office, the lobbying mechanism will swing into action. The policy solutions are out there, but there will be a resistance from people who listen exclusively to conservative media formats. We need to begin to build bridges to these people. Please consider sharing your Ironweed films with other friends who might have different informational sources. Thank you for taking a look at the film.
- by Keya Lea Horiuchi, Director, Considering Democracy: 8 Things to Ask Your Representative (Ironweed Films Volume 35: October 2008) For more information, visit http://www.ironweedfilms.com
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
9/11 & Government Bureaucracy by Ray Nowosielski
Another October is upon us once again. Crisp winds are begining to blow, the leaves are commencing their seasonal showing of spectral radiance, and another 9/11 anniversary has come and gone, begging us to remember that repressive legislation and worldwide carnage are the only things that stand between us and an Al-Qaeda victory party.
Fortunately for us, we are in an election year, so the nationalistic hyperbole was able to ring extra loud and hollow. Speakers at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions attempted to drive home the notion that they and they alone could shield us from an otherwise certain death at the wrinkled hands of Osama Bin Laden.
Though politicians would love you to believe that expensive wars in far off lands can wipe out terrorism, unfortunately, it must be said that tactics and concepts are impervious to bullets and bombs. (Civilians who happen to be standing nearby to persons who might make use of such tactics or hold such ideas, are not however.) Likewise, it should be mentioned that laws giving more power to government and law enforcement, while stripping the dearly held rights of the citizenry, are also not the key to preventing the actions of a few determined souls.
In fact, I would argue that the US government had all of the power, money, and resources it needed to prevent 9/11, on 9/11. As evidence for this claim, I submit the fact that the CIA was monitoring future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Midar, and Mohammed Atta for more than a year prior to the attacks. Not only were these would-be terrorists monitored, but the CIA was in posession of a copy Khalid al-Midar’s passport which included a multiple entry visa to the United States as far back as January 2000. Despite these facts, the FBI wasn’t warned about these characters until a few weeks before the attacks, and their names were never placed on terrorist watch lists.
All of this information comes straight from the Congressional “9/11 Report.” Mind you, most of it was buried in the footnotes. Perhaps you’re the type of person who would like to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Who wouldn’t? Consider then, that not only was the CIA aware of the movements of these Al-Qaeda terrorits, they were also aware of their associations to the embassy bombings in 1998 and the WTC bombing in 1993. On top of that, the CIA was monitoring a phone in Yemen which Nawaf al-Hazmi called from within the United States on several occasions using a phone that he had registered in his own name. Are we to believe that the big bad CIA couldn’t tell that these calls came from the U.S., thus demonstrating that Al-Qaeda was on our own soil?
Even after hijacker Khalid al-Midhar left the U.S. to assist with the bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, the CIA refused to inform theFBI that terrorists were now operating out of our country. Of course, giant bureaucracies make mistakes, what with the magnitude of their work load, right? How then, are we supposed to make sense of internal cables being distributed within the CIA claiming the the FBI had been informed that these men were in the country, when in fact the FBI had not received one word that Al-Qaeda terrorists were within their jurisdiction?
How are we supposed to make sense of the fact that when an FBI agent tasked to the CIA tried to send on word of al-Hazmi’s and al-Midhar’s visas to enter the U.S., he was told by a CIA desk officer that, “This isn’t a matter for the FBI.”
Apparently, the CIA had everything they needed to locate terrorists, they only lacked the will to disrupt their plots. Though they weren’t up to sharing information with the FBI, they were very much inclined to make the President believe they had done so. On August 6th, 2001, when President Bush received his now famous PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the US,” the FBI was given an advance copy to look over and approve. After they had done so, someone then inserted descriptions of over 70 active FBI field investigations into the terrorist threat. This doctored version would be the one that President Bush would see, thus giving the perpetually vacationing executive the notion that domestic law enforcement was alerted to and responding to the Al-Qaeda issue, though of course, they were not.
Over the course of this entire year, our filmmaking team has been seeking funding for a documentary about the preceding story, with no success. We think it's an important and intriguing tale that needs to be further explored. "A true-life espionage mystery thriller about a cat-and-mouse game between the CIA and FBI played over the fate of two future September 11th hijackers."
"9/11 is old news," we are told again and again. You can find this entire story for yourself in the 9/11 Commission Report and the FBI Inspector General's Report, provided that you know what to look for. However, thanks to a mainstream media that has not adequately educated us on the important issues involved here, most people who have read the report have not known what to look for or understood the ramifications of what the Commissioners have reported. Hopefully it won’t take too many more disasterous wars and a much further slide into bankruptcy for the public to wisen up, or next October might be a lot more bleak and dreary.
- by Ray Nowosielski, Director, 9/11 Press For Truth (Ironweed Films Volume 34: September 2008) For more information, visit http://www.ironweedfilms.com/films/past
Fortunately for us, we are in an election year, so the nationalistic hyperbole was able to ring extra loud and hollow. Speakers at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions attempted to drive home the notion that they and they alone could shield us from an otherwise certain death at the wrinkled hands of Osama Bin Laden.
Though politicians would love you to believe that expensive wars in far off lands can wipe out terrorism, unfortunately, it must be said that tactics and concepts are impervious to bullets and bombs. (Civilians who happen to be standing nearby to persons who might make use of such tactics or hold such ideas, are not however.) Likewise, it should be mentioned that laws giving more power to government and law enforcement, while stripping the dearly held rights of the citizenry, are also not the key to preventing the actions of a few determined souls.
In fact, I would argue that the US government had all of the power, money, and resources it needed to prevent 9/11, on 9/11. As evidence for this claim, I submit the fact that the CIA was monitoring future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Midar, and Mohammed Atta for more than a year prior to the attacks. Not only were these would-be terrorists monitored, but the CIA was in posession of a copy Khalid al-Midar’s passport which included a multiple entry visa to the United States as far back as January 2000. Despite these facts, the FBI wasn’t warned about these characters until a few weeks before the attacks, and their names were never placed on terrorist watch lists.
All of this information comes straight from the Congressional “9/11 Report.” Mind you, most of it was buried in the footnotes. Perhaps you’re the type of person who would like to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Who wouldn’t? Consider then, that not only was the CIA aware of the movements of these Al-Qaeda terrorits, they were also aware of their associations to the embassy bombings in 1998 and the WTC bombing in 1993. On top of that, the CIA was monitoring a phone in Yemen which Nawaf al-Hazmi called from within the United States on several occasions using a phone that he had registered in his own name. Are we to believe that the big bad CIA couldn’t tell that these calls came from the U.S., thus demonstrating that Al-Qaeda was on our own soil?
Even after hijacker Khalid al-Midhar left the U.S. to assist with the bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, the CIA refused to inform theFBI that terrorists were now operating out of our country. Of course, giant bureaucracies make mistakes, what with the magnitude of their work load, right? How then, are we supposed to make sense of internal cables being distributed within the CIA claiming the the FBI had been informed that these men were in the country, when in fact the FBI had not received one word that Al-Qaeda terrorists were within their jurisdiction?
How are we supposed to make sense of the fact that when an FBI agent tasked to the CIA tried to send on word of al-Hazmi’s and al-Midhar’s visas to enter the U.S., he was told by a CIA desk officer that, “This isn’t a matter for the FBI.”
Apparently, the CIA had everything they needed to locate terrorists, they only lacked the will to disrupt their plots. Though they weren’t up to sharing information with the FBI, they were very much inclined to make the President believe they had done so. On August 6th, 2001, when President Bush received his now famous PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the US,” the FBI was given an advance copy to look over and approve. After they had done so, someone then inserted descriptions of over 70 active FBI field investigations into the terrorist threat. This doctored version would be the one that President Bush would see, thus giving the perpetually vacationing executive the notion that domestic law enforcement was alerted to and responding to the Al-Qaeda issue, though of course, they were not.
Over the course of this entire year, our filmmaking team has been seeking funding for a documentary about the preceding story, with no success. We think it's an important and intriguing tale that needs to be further explored. "A true-life espionage mystery thriller about a cat-and-mouse game between the CIA and FBI played over the fate of two future September 11th hijackers."
"9/11 is old news," we are told again and again. You can find this entire story for yourself in the 9/11 Commission Report and the FBI Inspector General's Report, provided that you know what to look for. However, thanks to a mainstream media that has not adequately educated us on the important issues involved here, most people who have read the report have not known what to look for or understood the ramifications of what the Commissioners have reported. Hopefully it won’t take too many more disasterous wars and a much further slide into bankruptcy for the public to wisen up, or next October might be a lot more bleak and dreary.
- by Ray Nowosielski, Director, 9/11 Press For Truth (Ironweed Films Volume 34: September 2008) For more information, visit http://www.ironweedfilms.com/films/past
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Health, Money and Fear & Government Intervention by Dr. Paul Hochfeld
It was a great honor to have "Health, Money and Fear" included in the July edition of Ironweed Films. In the few months since I completed the film, I have been spending untold hours trying to distribute it with the goal of contributing to the debate.
Along the way, I have found a large number of sympathetic people. In my attempts to reach those who might not already be part of the choir, I have found a small but very vocal subset of apparently very bright people who have a violent reaction to any sense that our health care system calls for more government involvement which threatens "the magic of the marketplace."
To them I say that we have a health care non-system in which major business decisions are driven by the desire to maximize the profits gained from treating disease. There is relatively little money to be made from keeping people healthy. Accordingly, our current system will absolutely ensure that we have the most amount of disease from which we can profit. That's some kind of magic, eh?
As for more government involvement, that scares me too, but I don't think we have any choice. We are accelerating to the financial cliff and people are suffering because they don't have access to affordable health care. We need to develop a system in which somebody is leading the dialog about what medical services we can afford to provide to all our citizens.
I can almost guarantee that we will have a single payer system eventually... just like all our industrial competitors. It's the only way to control costs. Yes, "We are different", but what we have now isn't working.
-- Dr. Paul Hochfeld, Director, Health, Money and Fear (Ironweed Films Volume 32: July 2008)
For more information, visit http://www.ironweedfilms.com/films
Along the way, I have found a large number of sympathetic people. In my attempts to reach those who might not already be part of the choir, I have found a small but very vocal subset of apparently very bright people who have a violent reaction to any sense that our health care system calls for more government involvement which threatens "the magic of the marketplace."
To them I say that we have a health care non-system in which major business decisions are driven by the desire to maximize the profits gained from treating disease. There is relatively little money to be made from keeping people healthy. Accordingly, our current system will absolutely ensure that we have the most amount of disease from which we can profit. That's some kind of magic, eh?
As for more government involvement, that scares me too, but I don't think we have any choice. We are accelerating to the financial cliff and people are suffering because they don't have access to affordable health care. We need to develop a system in which somebody is leading the dialog about what medical services we can afford to provide to all our citizens.
I can almost guarantee that we will have a single payer system eventually... just like all our industrial competitors. It's the only way to control costs. Yes, "We are different", but what we have now isn't working.
-- Dr. Paul Hochfeld, Director, Health, Money and Fear (Ironweed Films Volume 32: July 2008)
For more information, visit http://www.ironweedfilms.com/films
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