The IBFF 2023 Official Selections Spotlight Series begins April 30th and extends over a number of months at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California. The schedule so far features films from China, India, the U.S., and Russia, and includes a special event for the Dalai Lama’s 88th birthday. This series will introduce audiences to new filmmakers, almost all women, and some very special guests.
Screenings of the films are one time only. Please stay tuned for news on additional films in the months ahead, and updates on speakers.
![[six rows of stacked black cap text between black laurels, official selection, and international buddhist film festival 2023 in bold]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Official-Selection-IBFF-2023-black-laurels.png)
Ganden: A Joyful Land
Directed by Ngawang Choephel
India, USA / 2019 / English, and Tibetan with English subtitles / 76 min plus Q&A / Documentary
Sunday, April 30, 4:30 pm
In Person: Director Ngawang Choephel
![[against the background of a dark wooden dresser piled with books, an elderly balding man with long white beard and moustache wearing maroon red robes, speaks to camera]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/ganden-a-joyful-land-festival.jpg)
Ganden is the most influential monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, likened by Buddhists to the Vatican. It is here where the Dalai Lama’s lineage began. For more than 500 years, monks lived in Ganden in simplicity and contentment, before the Chinese invasion drove them from their beloved home to start anew in India. Embodying the strength and joy their tradition teaches, survivors of the exodus tell of their lives in the old and new Ganden in Ngawang Choephel’s moving film, made in collaboration with creative consultant Annie Lennox. Filmed on location at Ganden Monastery in India, and featuring contemporary interviews with survivors of the exodus, animations, and remarkable documentary footage from 1940s Tibet, the film honors the stories of the monks’ lives in both the old and new Ganden.
Ngawang Choephel is a Sundance Jury Award Winner for his first film Tibet in Song. He was born in Dawa, a small county in western Tibet. Arrested by Chinese authorities in Tibet during the filming of Tibet in Song, he subsequently spent six and a half years in prison. In 2002 he received the Courage of Conscience Award from Peace Abbey for showing resilience in the face of adversity.
Geshe Wangyal: With Blessing of the Three Jewels
Directed by Ella Manzheeva
Armenia / 2022 / English, and Russian and Tibetan with English subtitles / 77 min plus Q&A / Documentary
Sunday, May 21, 4:30 pm
In Person: Director Ella Manzheeva
Special Guest: Robert Thurman, president of Tibet House US
![[sepia toned, tightly cropped at top and bottom, head shot of older man with goatee and large ears]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/geshe-wangyal-festival.jpg)
One of the most remarkable Tibetan Buddhist lamas to come to the U.S. was Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, an ethnic Kalmyk Mongol born in what is now Russia. He was a founding figure in the spread of Buddhism in the West, and was instrumental in arranging for the Dalai Lama’s first visit to the U.S. in 1979. He established the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America—the first Tibetan Buddhist center here, in Freehold, New Jersey—after emigrating to the U.S. in 1955, and was the first to teach American students, including composer Philip Glass and now-leading scholars Robert Thurman and Jeffrey Hopkins. This richly researched film introduces the key members of Geshe Wangyal’s circle, and tells his amazing and little-known story well. Filmed on location by Russian Director Ella Manzheeva in the USA, India, Russia, Hong Kong, and Germany.
Award-winning filmmaker Ella Manzheeva was born in the Russian republic of Kalmykia, and graduated from film school in Moscow. She is the first Kalmyk film director, and her feature debut, The Gulls, premiered at the 2015 Berlinale. She is currently in post-production on her second dramatic feature, White Road, selected for Cinéfondation L’Atleier of Cannes Film Festival.
Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death (Part Two)
Directed by Helen Whitney
USA / 2017 / English / 112 min plus Q&A / Documentary
WEST COAST PREMIERE
Sunday, June 18, 4:30 pm
In Person: Director Helen Whitney
Special Guests: Livestream with Chodo Robert Campbell Sensei and Koshin Paley Ellison Sensei, founders of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care
![[black and white image of large view of earth against white clouds and black sky, with a highlighted small silhouette of a couple in a dark foreground]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/into-the-night-festival.jpg)
Into The Night features intimate, provocative stories of nine men and women forever changed by their encounters with mortality. Through the lenses of Buddhism, a cancer diagnosis, a Native American vision quest, Talmudic perspectives, artistic pursuits, medical advances in aging and longevity, and breakthrough technologies, they challenge us to rethink our place in the universe. Featuring Chodo Robert Campbell Sensei and Koshin Paley Ellison Sensei, founders of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care.
(Image copyright Rocky Schenck.)
Helen Whitney is an Academy Award®-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose John Paul II: The Millennial Pope; The Mormons; Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero; Forgiveness: A Time to Love, A Time to Hate; Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light, and Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death (Part One), were all national PBS specials. Her masterful portrait of life in the oldest Trappist monastery in the U.S., The Monastery, was an ABC-TV national special. She’s directed numerous feature films and has authored or co-authored several produced scripts, and authored a published book, Forgiveness: A Time to Love, A Time to Hate.
The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in His Own Words
Special 88th Birthday Tribute Screening
Directed by Rosemary Rawcliffe
USA / 2022 / English, and Tibetan with English subtitles / 82 min plus Q&A / Documentary
Sunday, July 9, 4:30 pm
In Person: Director Rosemary Rawcliffe
Special Guest: Lama Palden Drolma
![[portrait of a very happy, smiling, older monk, with eye glasses and dark red and gold robe, sitting against a background of a light colored curtained window and tan frame, with small pinnacled statue to the left]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/the-great-14th-festival.jpg)
The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in His Own Words, is an autobiography that uses first hand conversations and previously unreleased images and footage from His Holiness’ private collection, to paint an intimate, complex, and humanized story of the vast experiences that he has encountered. This film is narrated uniquely by the Dalai Lama himself. The Great 14th explores an epic and heroic life of resilience, historical importance, and unbounded humanity that has touched and influenced people of all faiths and nationalities around the world for more than sixty years. This special screening is in honor of the 14th Dalai Lama’s 88th birthday.
Rosemary Rawcliffe is an Emmy® Award-winning producer and director with a lifetime of professional experience in television, advertising, film, video, and theatrical production. As a humanitarian, she has a lifelong commitment to creating films emphasizing human rights—stories told from a female perspective —that witness spirit, hope, and courage. Her previous films include Women of Tibet: Gyalyum Chemo, the Great Mother; and Women of Tibet: A Quiet Revolution.
Dark Red Forest
Directed by Jin Huaqing
China / 2021 / Tibetan and Chinese with English subtitles / 85 min / Documentary
Sunday, September 17, 4:30 pm
![[a very large crowd of dark red robed nuns with shaved heads seen from behind]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/dark-red-forest-festival.jpg)
Dark Red Forest is a beautiful invocation of the unique daily life of women devoted to their faith, an intimate engagement with a hidden world. Twenty thousand Buddhist nuns live in a monastery on a snowy plateau in Tibet. Surrounded by harsh nature and secluded from the outside world, these women offer us a glimpse into their exploration of life’s biggest questions. Far away from their families, the nuns commit everything to reach an awakened state, entrusting themselves to the lama and each other. Filmed on location at Yarchen Monastery.
Director Jin Huaqing spent six years making this film, visiting the monastery over forty times and often living among the nuns for months at a stretch. He has five award-winning previous films, and is an active film studies teacher with Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, and Suzhou University.
Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity
Directed by Dorsay Alavi
USA / 2023 / English / 137 min plus Q&A / Documentary
Sunday, September 24, 4:30 pm
In Person: Director Dorsay Alavi
![[darkened room with spotlight off to the right, on a seated black man in dark clothes playing saxophone]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/wayne-shorter-zero-gravity-festival-250x167-1.jpg)
Wayne Shorter—saxophonist, composer, innovator, Buddhist—a giant in music and an inspiring influence on the generations that have come up behind him, died earlier this year. We are very fortunate to have this remarkable film record of his life and work to bring all of his gifts into focus—this is the first jazz biography that rises to the complexity of its subject and has the scale to match the story.
Featuring intimate conversations with Shorter and informative contributions from Hancock, Mitchell, the surprising and ebullient Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sonny Rollins, Carlos Santana, Marcus Miller, Don Was, Ron Carter, Dave Holland, and others, the film uses animation, re-enactments, and lots and lots of great music given pride of place to tell the story. It’s all skillfully crafted through impressive editing, visualizations, and sound design, and benefits greatly from the director’s nearly thirty year association and friendship with Shorter.
Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity is streaming on Amazon Prime as a three “portal” series totaling over three hours. We are screening Portals One and Two, and there will be a short intermission between the two, with a Q&A with Director Dorsay Alavi after the film.
The Monk and the Gun
Directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji
Bhutan / 2023 / English, and Dzongkha with English subtitles / 107 min plus Q&A / Dramatic Feature
Sunday, December 10, 4:30 pm
In Person: Pawo Choyning Dorji
![[elderly monk with yellow jacket looks pensive while clapping hands, surrounded to his right by shouting younger monk in gold and maroon robes, holding a small drum-like object with tassels in his left hand, and a male in green jacket looking downward in concern, with other males behind them shouting and clapping]](https://buddhistfilmfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/the-monk-and-the-gun-festival-250x167-1.jpg)
Set in 2006 just as the King of Bhutan has decided to transition the nation to a democracy, the film bemusedly follows the efforts of young government officials to teach rural villagers about elections, voting, and democracy. Two conflicting efforts (with very different goals) to secure an antique gun, drive the narrative forward until all elements converge at a full moon ceremony led by an elderly lama, the teacher of the monk of the title.
Working with mostly nonprofessionals again, as well as with talented cinematographer Jigme Tenzing (who lensed Lunana… as well as Khyentse Norbu’s Hema Hema—Sing Me A Song While I Wait which Dorji produced), Dorji captures the remote nation and its culture at the very beginning of its historic entry into democracy, and manages to poke some fun at American politics along the way. This is a polished and confident sophomore feature, with perhaps an even broader appeal than his first.
