Film Program
The film program is an educational resource promoting and exploring shamanic, goddess and buddhist knowledge. Its purpose is to endorse non duality and coherence to our world by exploring myth and the archetypal relationships of mankind. Reawakening man's relationship to his environment goes beyond 'sustainability', it is part of the psyche and to understand it is of paramount importance.
CHAOS REIGNS
Chaos Reigns in pre production - 40 min's
Just as the new scientific understanding of life is emerging out of chaos, gaia and complexity theories we can also see how the ancient myths of our collective unconscious are part of a sustainable interaction with the world around us. The ancient myth of the bee reflected consciousness as the 'dance of the cosmos' as bees help mankind understand the interconnection of life on Earth, and as bringers of creation they appear frequently in classical mythology.
It is the Goddess who weaves the web of life, the creation of all being, the here and now and who's consciousness was, is and for eternity will be, the divine.
Bees were the bearers of order out of chaos. The oracle stone (above and carved with bees) in Delphi Greece stood at the navel of the world and spoke the prophecy of the Gods which spontaneously emerged from the dance of the cosmos.
Just as modern science has unveiled cause and effect as the rulers of the universe it is also revealed that our concentric ancient myths to be consistent with ecological awareness. It is as if by magic our collective unconscious supported by the pillars of ancient archetypes, the creative architecture of our being, is the ultimate sustainable state.
This 40 minute documentary explores the archetype of the bee, the web of life, emergence of creativity from chaos and how our creative imagination mirrors the world around us. With Fritjof Capra.
THE GODDESS
THE GODDESS - In pre production
The mother goddess has been expressed in all cultures, from the first sculpted figures of the Paleolithic era in 20,000 BC down to contemporary pictures of the virgin mary. The goddess, wherever she is found, is an image that inspires and focuses a perception of the universe as an organic, sacred and indivisible whole, in which humanity, the Earth and all life on earth participate as her ‘children’. Through her everything is woven together in one cosmic web. Her myth has always acted as the hinge between the imagination and the natural world. Through her the world is intrinsic, binding consciousness to the imaginative and realizing our relationship to the world. This film explores the ancient european Goddess cults and how relevant they are to us today.
We are currently seeking funding partners for this film. For more details please email us
THE HERMAPHRODITE WORLD
Details of this film can be found at www.theasiatrust.org
"We cannot define the mystical, we can only point toward it for it lies beyond language. It is the feeling of being at one with everything, of knowing what is real, an awareness of the connectedness and interrelationship of all things. Thus the androgynous is the heart of everything and from whence all religions came" thus starts this 58 minute documentary film.
Exploring the psychology of what Buddhism refers to as yab yum or 'both both,' the Buddhist belief that the supreme entity is non-dualistic, this film celebrates the extraordinary hermaphrodite culture in Thailand and how Buddhism has forged contemporary modern society. The film follows the path of various hermaphrodite beauty pageants ending in the Miss Universe held in America. A film exploring the fixed ideas of monotheism, non duality and the flux which interconnects us to the great mystery. Details of the film can be viewed at www.theasiatrust.org
Journeys to the Centre
Journeys to the Centre is a series of four 52 minute documentary films exploring 'animals of myth, animals of power' and the shamans who are bound to them. Filmed in four different continents they explore the shamans mythic archetype.
THE SILENCE - In pre production
Since prehistoric times, the Bön religion (Tibetan shamanism) has played a significant role in the religious and cultural development of numerous peoples in Central Asia. Even after the introduction of Buddhism, Bön continued to exert a powerful influence on the Tibetan nation and to this very day, it still permeates the language, customs, folklore, medicine, and architecture of Tibet and the surrounding regions. THE SILENCE is the story a Lapa, a Tibetan buddhist shaman monk who lives in the Triten Norbutse Monastery Nepal. Without explanation and defying his masters advice, he suddenly leaves his monastery to full fill a personal quest to find his spiritual animal, the snow leopard, in one of the last unexplored wildernesses in the world, Nepal’s Upper Mustang region.
To Lapa the snow leopard is the elusive mythical and transcending ‘Buddha nature’ of silence, emptiness and non-duality. Away from the bickering of the monastery Lapa's search for the animal takes him high up into a monumental landscape, the abode of the snows.
Sharing his inter related shamanistic and buddhist philosophy, a holistic, not dualistic world view and performing his own sky burial to face death, he travels through a terrible snow storm to celebrate the transcendence and mystery of this ancient wilderness deep in the Himalayas. Lapa's relationship to the world through myth and Bön is revealed but does he find the snow leopard? We find out in this 52 minute film.
Busa and her Bee - In production
Busa
Busa is a female shaman with strong links to her past, she shares the deep cultural undertone and knowledge of the Akha elders and lives within the harmonious cycles of the forests. Her Shaman animal, the Bee, the ancient feminine archetype found throughout old Europe before Christianity banished her, draws Busa to the centric intuitively of her mind and the emotional impulse of her feminine nature. The bee is a form of the Goddess interconnecting everything in the forest (pollinating) but also a microcosm of an inner cosmic web the tribal elders carry within themselves, the Akha Yung. For Busa, nature is not distinguished from humankind, the bee is Busa’s vehicle to the waters, the moon and the rooftop and canopies of the sacred forests and the world. She is the 'bee keeper' in the forest spiritually binding the bees and the Great Mystery to the tribe, the hymn of creation.
But Busa is troubled. Her family have forsaken her to join the Christian faith and the repressive demands for a single claim to truth; they don’t come to see her anymore. Jan, the American missionary who has converted the family has driven a wedge between the ancient emotional relationship to the world and replaced it to a material and subjective one, the monotheistic foundations of Christianity. For Jan, Busa’s bee is a threat to control, order and mankind’s hierarchical claim to the world, the forging of the modern West.
Jan’s bell clanks dully through the forest, signaling the strong arm of civilized Christianity has arrived to bring light into the night and darkness of Creation here, and preach the true creed. To Jan the True Word of God is the true Word of Man for on the eighth day we separated from Creation and forged the self to bring battle, and its word, the Bible, divides good from evil, reason from chaos, material from spirit and manufactures talk that never existed here before -
We will fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, and every living thing that moves on earth. Man is the lord and master of nature.
Jan has labeled Busa a witch of the modern era and sees her in allegiance with the devil and her bee one of HIS demons. To Jan the bee is a symbol of the impending chaos in the world.
Busa stands before the tribe who have gathered and says Jan's desire to convert people can be the only sin. The white people have always come to plunder or imposed imported ideology in a last ditch effort to find a home in this wilderness. What makes the preacher man in the white neck harness so different? He views his God above and outside nature. The sultry heavy midday air clamps everything down like a vice as they listen to Busa. My bees are very annoyed with Jesus, I have spoken with them and they say Man is his God and that missionaries have a long history of breaking tribes to open forest resources. Often sponsored by the CIA and powerful multi national firms.
Busa’s trouble goes deeper. My bees are mysteriously disappearing as they are by the billions around the world. Why are they disappearing? Without them there will be no fruit, no vegetables no creation. Is this a sign of the goddess’s wrath? Her vengeance and unhappiness? Bees, like all insects that spin cocoons or weave webs, serve as images of the miraculous interconnectedness of life, their hives are the stars in the night sky, their essence the tears of the sun who’s light speaks the truth and who’s honey embalms and protects the bodies of the dead.
The film is a story of two world views - a forged separation from the world and the impending slavery of monotheism verses the transcendence of mythic archetypes and the plight of Akha tradition. The film explores the synchronicity of life and the invisible polytheistic reality intersecting with the human world. Without an interconnected relationship with Mother Earth humankind faces a great peril and we can only peer into the murky mirror to face ourselves on doomsday, the day of wrath, the day of judgment.
The Shaft of the Dead Man - In pre production
The vast siberian landscape of the arctic fox, the snowy owl, reindeer and woodpeckers is the the Siberian shamans home.
The Doomsday Cowboy and the Witch
The Doomsday Cowboy and the Witch - in pre production
100 min's Feature
In attempting to bring the Bible to a stone age tribe in the Amazon rainforest the missionary John Alcott, becomes shattered in the delirium of the jungle, a dark abyss of primordial unconsciousness. Plagued by the fever dreams of the forest and haunted by the impending chaos within and without his mind, and increasingly fanatical about his monocular religious beliefs Alcott builds a church in the jungle with the pagan tribe. Forcing the shaman to confess allegiance with the devil before burning him in sacrifice to God, the missionary pronounces himself the second coming, a Man made in Gods reflected image. Consumed by madness he leads the tribe into war before meeting his untimely death by the fear he has fought all his life, the sword of righteousness.
The film is an intense psychological study of a desperate, insecure man's twisted psyche and his obsessive secular megalomania and search for truth amongst a tribe who see the world as Divine.
Anti-Missionary Film Project
The evangelical push from North America is accelerating the already immense damage and genocide inflicted on tribes behind a pseudo-religious front. In another 20 years no trace of aboriginal life anywhere will have survived unless we act to save the last remaining aboriginal cultures facing this looming crisis without organized assistance.
We are currently seeking funding to make an educational film which is designed and structured to be dubbed and adapted into multiple tribal languages, educating shaman cultures how important it is to conserve and be proud of their cultures, and warning them against the corrosive systematic abuse of christian missionaries. The film will be mass distributed through indigenous NGO partners to tribal groups throughout the world.
We aim to dub the film in 20 tribal languages and distribute 100,000 VCD copies.
Please email us about this project
info@thespiritfoundation.com