The Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday year has seen several new films featuring him, and our next Official Selection Screening will be The Dalai Lama’s Gift, with Tibetan Buddhism scholar Roger Jackson joining Director Ed Bastian at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, CA.
The film documents the first Kalachakra initiation held outside of Asia, a 1981 event that took place in rural Wisconsin. Digitized from the never before seen original brilliant 16mm footage, and augmented with recent interviews with several of the participants, now leading Buddhist scholars Jan Willis, Jeffrey Hopkins, and Jose Cabézon, the film is an intimate and historic story that gracefully describes the Kalachakra teachings even as it details the unprecedented efforts to offer them in the U.S.
Respected scholar and teacher Roger Jackson has a multi-decade career as a professor of religion and Asian studies at several colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. He has authored numerous influential books on Buddhist and Tibetan topics, lectures frequently, and is a regular contributor to Lion’s Roar and Tricycle magazines.
