Donations on behalf of specific projects are accepted by Buddhist Film Foundation, Inc. (BFF) and are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by US law. Please visit the individual project websites or contact the for more information.
Donations by check (please be sure to note the specific project for the donation) may be mailed to:
Buddhist Film Foundation
PO Box 22755
Oakland, CA 94609-5355
USA
Donations by credit card may be made using a project’s donate button if included with the project description. Please note that the donate buttons are specifically linked to their project. The button to the right (under Your Support Makes A Difference! Thank You!) allows you to donate to the Buddhist Film Foundation general fund. Thank you.
Current projects with BFF fiscal sponsorship are:
The American Story of Buddhism
Country: USA
Producers: Lyn Goldfarb and Gaetano Kazuo Maida
Status: in development
Official website: TBA
The American Story of Buddhism is the first documentary series to comprehensively explore the American encounter with Buddhism and its many and diverse forms, key participants and over 150 year history in the U.S. This character-driven series is about immigrants and intellectuals, artists and activism, curiosity and tradition—from exoticism to mindfulness, and from the margins to the mainstream.
The series is inspired by the book How the Swans Came to the Lake–A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (Shambhala/Random House) by Rick Fields, for which exclusive film rights have been secured. A revised and updated edition is in the works.
Thank you for your donation.
Arising Light: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
and the Birth of a New Era in India
Country: USA/India
Producer: Navaloka Productions
Director: David Blundell
Status: completed 30 minute promotional version
Official website: www.arising-light.org
Dr. Ambedkar was one of the founding fathers of India’s independence, helping frame its constitution and serving as its first Minister of Law in 1947. He was a Hindu dalit, an Untouchable, and in 1956 led an unprecedented mass conversion to Buddhism with hundreds of thousands of other dalits in a public event in Nagpur, India. Arising Light tells his story and follows this movement to liberate dalits from the oppression of their Hindu caste status as it evolves into a dynamic social phenomenon approaching its 50th anniversary.
Birdsong
Country: USA
Producer: Marabella StoryCraft, LLC
Producer: Pamela Ayo Yetunde
Status: in development
Official website: www.pamelaayoyetunde.com/marabellastorycraft
Inspired by the famous story of the Buddha and Kisa Gotami (a desperate mother whose child has died), Birdsong is a dramatic feature that imagines a contemporary mother, a jazz singer, mourning the loss of her son, and the new direction her life takes as she heals from the trauma.
Thank you for your donation.
Buddha’s Lost Children
Country: Netherlands/Burma/Thailand
Producer: EMS Films
Director: Mark Verkerk
Status: released
Official website: www.buddhaslostchildren.com
- Grand Jury Prize for Documentary AFI Festival
- Official Dutch Entry for the Academy Awards®
A rare look at life way beyond the view of most, filmed on location among the hill tribes in the border regions of Burma and Thailand, the Golden Triangle infamous for its drug lords and violence. A nomadic, horseback-riding Buddhist monk, Phra Kru Ba, a former boxer known as the “Tiger Monk,” devotes his life to helping the isolated communities there, and rescuing orphan children.
Chasing the Face of Buddha
Country: Canada
Producer: Rod Ruel
Director: Lindsay Rushaleau
Status: in production
Producer’s website: TBA
Chasing the Face of Buddha is a feature length documentary that follows the extraordinary pilgrimage of master sculptor, Sunti Pichetchaiyukul, as he takes on the greatest and most challenging project of his career. Over the course of the coming year Sunti will attempt to produce the world’s first hyper-realistic and potentially most historically accurate depiction of the man whom he has aspired to sculpt his whole life… Buddha. Chasing the Face of Buddha will provide a visceral experience of the artistic journey and explore both the possibilities and personal limitations that are encountered when attempting to give form to the ineffable. Filmed on location in Thailand to Nepal, India, England and the United States, the film takes the viewer on a cinematic journey across cultural lines to travel deep into the heart of the creative process.
Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF)
Festival website: diff.co.in
The primary aim of DIFF is to celebrate the love of cinema and to offer Dharamshala’s varied denizens exposure to good quality independent films from around the world. Equally important is the goal of creating a nonpartisan, cultural event where all of the area’s residents—Indians, Tibetan refugees, and expatriates alike—can participate in and be stakeholders. Founded by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, DIFF is presented by White Crane Arts & Media Trust, a nonprofit organization that promotes contemporary art, cinema, and independent media practices in the Himalayan region.
Thank you for your donation.
The Dharma Bum
Country: Ireland
Producer/Director: Ian Lawton
Status: in production
Official Website: www.thedharmabum.eu
The Dharma Bum is a feature length, part animated, documentary film telling the true story of the 19th century Irish figure, Laurence Carroll, the first western Buddhist monk, who took the name U Dhammaloka.
Every War Has Two Losers
Country: USA
Producer: Zinc Films
Director: Haydn Reiss
Status: released
Every War Has Two Losers tells the story of how one man, William Stafford (1914–1993), chose to answer the call to war. It is a story of confronting beliefs that swirl around war—Isn’t war inevitable? Even necessary? What about the enemy? Stafford refused to fight in World War II and served four years in camps for conscientious objectors. Later he was the winner of the National Book Award for poetry.
Narrated by Linda Hunt; voice of William Stafford: Peter Coyote; original music by John Gorka; featuring Alice Walker, Robert Bly, Maxine Hong Kingston, Coleman Barks, Naomi Shibab Nye, W.S. Merwin, Michael Meade and Kim Stafford.
Into the Current: Burma’s Political Prisoners
Country: USA/Burma
Producer: Democratic Voice of Burma
Director: Jeanne Hallacy
Status: released
Official website: TBA
This film honors the leaders of Burma’s peaceful democracy movement and their personal sacrifices for the freedom of their people. The film documents the struggle of prisoners of conscience jailed by one of the world’s most repressive military regimes. Into the Current (“Yayzan Lan” in Burmese) is co-produced with the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an exile broadcaster that delivers programs by satellite into a country without press freedom.
The film explores Burma’s non-violent movement and the convictions of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, poet Min Ko Naing, comedian Zarganar and women’s leader Nilar Thein. Their stories are told through scenes of political activities filmed at risk by DVB edited with rare archival footage and new material filmed with Burmese exiles. Bo Kyi, a former prisoner, introduces his leaders as he carries their voice and the fate of the 2000 other political prisoners to the international stage.
Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF)
Official website: www.kimff.org
KIMFF features films that explore the growing diversity and complexity of the human relationship with mountains. Organized by Himal Association in 2000, KIMFF has presented a wide range of works from all over the world in its festivals in Kathmandu, Nepal. KIMFF seeks to engender a deeper understanding of the social and cultural realities of the world’s highlands, especially those in developing nations. The upcoming 12th edition of the KIMFF will take place December 11–15, 2014.
Love From Ladakh
Country: UK
Producer: Jean-Paul Mertinez, Illumina Studios and Media, Ltd.
Director: Robin Crumley
Status: in production
Official website: www.illuminastudios.co.uk/project/return-to-ladakh/
Love From Ladakh follows Andrew Harvey, the author, religious scholar and teacher of mystic traditions, as he returns to the place that inspired his life-long mission of Sacred Activism. The film will capture his reunion with the current incarnation of his spiritual teacher, Kyabje Thouksey Rinpoche, in the very same monastery where Andrew began his spiritual transformation over thirty years ago, a transformation documented in his first book, Journey In Ladakh. Ladakh, India is one of the last regions where traditional Tibetan culture thrives, a land of extreme and rugged landscapes. Set in a desert plateau at over 10,000 feet and surrounded by the majestic peaks of the Himalayas, the film will also highlight the beauty of Ladakh itself.
Meditate and Destroy
Country: USA
Producer: Blue Lotus Films
Director: Sarah Fisher
Status: completed, distributed by Alive Mind
Official website: www.meditateanddestroy.com
Documentary about Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx, a memoir about life lived at the edge of destruction until he finds his way back to the Buddhist practice of his well-known father, author/teacher Stephen Levine, though on his own, punk terms. Non-conformity, community service, substance abuse, prison, meditation… compassion in action and more.
My Reincarnation
Country: USA
Producer: Zohe Films
Director: Jennifer Fox
Status: released
Official website: www.myreincarnationfilm.com
- Leipzig Film Festival
- Festival dei Popoli
- IDFA (International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam)
- Hot Docs (Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto)
With unprecedented twenty-year access, My Reincarnation tells the inside story of Choegyal Namkhai Norbu—one of the last incarnate masters to be trained in Tibet, and his Italian-born son, Yeshi’s, stubborn reluctance to follow in his father’s footsteps. My Reincarnation is an epic father-son drama, spanning two decades and three generations, about family, spirituality, cultural survival, identity, inheritance, growing old, growing up—and past and future lives.
Jennifer Fox is the award-winning filmmaker best known for her Beirut: The Last Home Movie and the ten-part PBS series An American Love Story; her most recent film is the six hour Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman.
Never Forget Tibet
Country: UK
Producer/Director: Jean-Paul Mertinez
Status: post-production
Official website: neverforgettibet.com
This is the secret story of the Dalai Lama’s journey into exile, told through exclusive access to the Dalai Lama and the previously unknown private diary of the Indian high official who led him to safety, Har Mandar Singh. This is the first time that the story has ever been told on film. Narrated by Hugh Bonneville and with music by Anoushka Shankar.
One Mind
Country: China
Producer: Commonfolk Films
Director: Edward A. Burger
Status: released
Producer’s website: www.commonfolkfilms.com
One Mind is a documentary film that engages audiences with the living practice of a traditional Zen (Chan) monastic community in Southern China. Eschewing talking-head interviews and the authority of a narrative voice, the film offers a 90-minute immersion into the textures and sounds of a natural life, subtly expressing a motivation toward the spacious wisdom and compassion born of an enlightened awareness of unity and interdependence. In One Mind some common myths are dismissed, as audiences see that robust spiritual communities committed to strict adherence to tradition are thriving, while remaining somewhat hidden, at the core of China’s spiritual landscape today.
Weathering the traumatic and rapidly shifting tides of history over the past century, the disciples of China’s great Zen Master, Empty Cloud (Xu Yun) have emerged at the heart of the revitalization of Zen Buddhism in China. Zhenru Monastery, the place where Master Empty Cloud lived and died, is considered one of China’s most respected and austere communities, maintaining a lineage over 1,200 years old. In harmony with the land that sustains them, the monks at Zhenru Monastery farm, grow tea, and maintain a daily liturgy and strict meditation schedule. At the heart of this community is a group of cloistered meditators. Respected for their utter dedication to an internal art of cultivation, they are supported as the wellspring of wisdom and profound compassion from which the community draws its strength.
A Place Beyond Sky
Country: USA
Producer/Director: Alison Fast
Status: in production
Official website: TBA
This is a one hour broadcast documentary film about Lama Tsultrim Allione (Joan Ewing), a Western woman whose life’s work is to retrieve the wisdom of the feminine within the Buddhist tradition. Lama Tsultrim is among the first American women to be ordained a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition in the 1970s by her root teacher, HH the 16th Karmapa, and she has helped to blaze a trail for women practitioners in the West. Her own story, coupled with her biographical details of early Tantric female practitioners, will illuminate the history and accomplishments of women yoginis living in India and Tibet, whose liberation stories provide a formidable example for our time.
Ruth and Margaret
Country: USA
Producer: Nancy Kates
Status: in development
Ruth and Margaret is a feature-length documentary/narrative hybrid intended for public television, film festivals, and educational distribution. The film, inspired by Lois Banner’s Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Their Circle, examines these two women, their relationship and influence on each other’s work, and their unusual roles as preeminent social scientists in an era in which women struggled against systemic professional discrimination.
Sanctuary
Country: USA/Nepal
Producer: Waterwash
Director: Lillian Ball
Status: completed part one; part two in production
Official website: http://sanctuarylumbini.org
Sanctuary documents the efforts of Buddhist monk Venerable Metteyya to preserve the Lumbini Crane Sanctuary within the 3 square mile Sacred Garden area identified with the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama. Sarus cranes, the tallest flying birds in the world, have lived in the fields around Lumbini since the time Buddha was young. Though crane numbers are dwindling, they still nest in the area today along with many other wildlife species.
There are plans afoot to replace the 254 acre sanctuary with 5 hotels and a 1,000 person meditation center. Following his appointment as the new Vice Chairman of Lumbini Development Trust (LDT), there is finally hope to protect wildlife and preserve local culture. But even though LDT controls the Sacred Garden, the preservation of the Sanctuary and villager involvement remain unresolved, largely due to a changing political system.
Thank you for your donation.
Search
Country: USA
Producer/Director: Pema Dhondup
Status: in development
Official website: www.searchdalailama.com
This is a unique film and video series project exploring the over 500 year old tradition of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is due to mark his 80th birthday in 2015, and the future of the institution is unknown. The project consists of a dramatic feature film and a series of shorts documenting each of the historic Dalai Lamas. Producer/director Pema Dhondup (We’re No Monks) founded the Tibetan production company Clear Mirror Pictures in Los Angeles, California.
The Sweet Requiem
Country: India
Producer: Ritu Sarin
Directors: Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam
Status: completed; international festival screenings
Official website: www.thesweetrequiem.com
The Sweet Requiem is a dramatic feature about a young exile Tibetan woman living in New Delhi. When she unexpectedly sees a man she holds responsible for her father’s murder on a high Himalayan pass, long-suppressed memories of her traumatic escape from Tibet are reignited and she is propelled on an obsessive search for reconciliation and closure. Filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzin Sonam are veteran documentarians whose award-winning previous dramatic feature, Dreaming Lhasa, is distributed by First Run Features. The Sweet Requiem had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and its US Premiere as a Buddhist Film Foundation co-presentation at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
The Tale
Country: USA
Producers: Jennifer Fox, Oren Moverman, Laura Rister, Mynette Louie, Simone Pero, Sol Bondy, Lawrence Inglee, Regina K. Scully, Lynda Weinman, and Reka Posta
Director: Jennifer Fox
Status: completed; World-wide distribution 2018—HBO Films
Official website: www.thetalemovie.com
Revisiting a short story she wrote at thirteen, a documentary filmmaker (Laura Dern) faces life altering questions about her first sexual experience and the elusive nature of memory. The Tale is director Jennifer Fox’s personal memoir examining the journey from denial to truth and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. The Tale stars two-time Academy Award® nominee and Emmy Award® winner Laura Dern (Big Little Lies, Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Academy Award® winner Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream), Academy Award® winner Common (Selma), Jason Ritter (Kevin [Probably] Saves the World), Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager), Frances Conroy (American Horror Story, Six Feet Under), John Heard (The Sopranos), and Isabelle Nélisse (Mama). It is written and directed by Sundance Grand Prize Winner and Emmy® nominated director Jennifer Fox (My Reincarnation).
NEXT STEPS
A specially designed global educational outreach and social impact program is being developed and deployed in connection with the HBO release of the film. Contributions are being sought to fund this campaign to enable the film and its themes and issues of sexual abuse, memory, and trauma to reach and engage audiences and communities around the world.
Please use the button below to select your own donation amount.
Thank you for your donation.
Touch the Sky
Country: USA
Producer: MDS Productions
Director: John Dileva Halpern
Status: in production
Official website: www.mdsfilms.com
A portrait of Robert Filliou, 20th century artist and Fluxus community founder/member. Among many and varied things, Filliou was a Buddhist, a student of Dudjom Rinpoche, a leading Tibetan Buddhist lama, and tutor to the 14th Dalai Lama, and Filliou died during a three year retreat he undertook at the Dordogne Buddhist Center in France. Touch the Sky explores his art, vintage filmed performances, and fanciful new recreations of his art events. Included are exclusively filmed imitations of Robert performed by artists like Alison Knowles and Hank Bull.
Thank you for your donation.
Until the Music Is Over
Country: Brazil/Italy
Producer: Aletéia Selonk
Director: Cristiane Oliveira
Status: in pre-production
This dramatic feature tells the story of Chiara, a Brazilian descendant of Italian immigrants who, in the aftermath of a family tragedy, meets a Buddhist. This encounter leads her to believe in reincarnation, and a journey she takes through the very traditional communities of southern Brazil reveals a virtually unknown thriving culture along with some secrets.
Verses In Exile
Country: USA/India
Producers: Gesar Mukpo
Status: in development
Official website: TBA
A culture of music production has exploded at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamshala, India, and the Tibetan hip hop scene there has given birth to talented stars now living all over the world. Through the eyes of the artists themselves, the film examines the evolution of the music and its relevance to the preservation of Tibetan culture in exile. It’s part cinema verité documentary and part collection of music performances, with a ready-to-play soundtrack.
Waking Buddha
Country: USA
Producer/Director: John Dileva Halpern
Producers: Julia Miller, Jim Miller, Post Factory NY
Executive Producer: MDS Productions
Status: in post-production
Official website: www.wakingbuddha.com
For the first time, a non-fiction feature length film tells the story of the meditation movement and Buddhism’s relationship to today’s new consciously engaged culture and advocacy for a sustainable future.
The film spans the past three decades of Tibetan Buddhism’s contribution to the West, the evolution of a spiritual intelligence and motivation beyond self, toward an altruistic engagement with others, the world, and our environment.
Featuring rare, in-depth interviews with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Dzongzar Rinpoche, Bernardo Bertolucci, Philip Glass, Melissa Mathison, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, and others, revealing the spiritual and cultural roots of this emerging, social paradigm. Moving into the first two decades of the 21st century, Dr. Mark Epstein; Gyeltrul Jigme Rinpoche; Dr. Joseph Loizzo; Matthieu Ricard, PhD; Sharon Salzberg; Robert Thurman, PhD.
Plus James Cameron, Richard Gere, Yoko Ono, and others further explore this altruistic engagement, related science, research, activism, and art as it evolves today.
Beautifully filmed in India, Nepal, Tibet, Switzerland, France, Canada, and the USA over the past twenty-five years.
Zen Life: D.T. Suzuki
Country: Canada/Japan
Producer: International Videoworks; Michael Goldberg
Executive Producer/Director; John Wittmayer, Co-producer
Status: released
Official website: www.azenlife-film.org
The Zen philosopher, D.T. (Daisetz Teitaro) Suzuki, (1870–1966) is widely credited with introducing Zen Buddhism to the West. He accompanied Soyen Shaku Roshi, the first Zen priest in the US (he spoke at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893), as his translator in travels around the US in 1905.
His ground-breaking books include The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk, Introduction to Zen Buddhism, Zen and Japanese Culture and Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings. He taught for several years at Columbia University and was an influence on Carl Jung, Gary Snyder, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, Eric Fromm, Thomas Merton, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Waley, Christmas Humphreys, Martin Heidegger and many others.
This biographical film features rare footage of Dr. Suzuki in Japan and the US, including an electric conversation with Huston Smith from a 1950s NBC broadcast. Others appearing include: Inoue Zenjo, Donald Richie, Mihoko Okamura, Robert Aitken, Elsie Mitchell, Frederick Franck, Gary Snyder, Phil Cousineau, Marjorie Edel, Albert Stunkard.
