New Dalai Lama Film Awakens Filmmaker and Audiences to the Profound Impact of the Dalai Lama
‘Dalai Lama Awakening,’ which is narrated by actor Harrison Ford, is a new and powerful Poetic ReVision of the original award-winning ‘Dalai Lama Renaissance’ Film.
LOS ANGELES – Can a film inspire an “awakening” within its filmmaker, as well as with audiences around the world?
Dalai Lama Awakening, which features the Dalai Lama and is narrated by actor Harrison Ford, is Director Khashyar Darvich’s newest documentary film– a new “Poetic ReVision” of his award-winning Dalai Lama Renaissance which won 12 awards and screened over 1,000 times around the world.
Dalai Lama Awakening presents the profound and life-changing journey of innovative Western thinkers who travel to India to meet with the Dalai Lama to solve many of the world’s problems. The result was an inner transformation of the participants, as well as what audiences report is a personal transformational experience for those who watch the film.
“When I was making Dalai Lama Renaissance,” says Director Khashyar Darvich, “Dalai Lama Awakening is the film that my heart and soul wanted to make. I was happy with the international success and impact of Dalai Lama Renaissance, but we had to make some compromises in editing the film in order to meet the requirements of distributers. But at the time, I felt like my cinematic child received invasive surgery and lost some of its true authentic beauty of what it was meant to be. While Dalai Lama Renaissance is like the screenplay of a novel, Dalai Lama Awakening is the novel itself.”
“Dalai Lama Awakening is a film without compromise,” says Darvich. “It is something pure, fulfilling and complete– a heart-felt expression from the filmmaker’s poetic soul. This is the film that inspired me and moved me at the most profound level, so I know that it will deeply impact audiences as well.”
Audiences who have seen both films, nearly unanimously express that Dalai Lama Awakening is a more profound, emotional and powerful film than its abbreviated cousin Dalai Lama Renaissance.
How different of a film is Dalai Lama Awakening?
“When I was meditating on what to call the film,” says Director Darvich, “it became clear that Dalai Lama Awakening deserved it own unique title because it is much more than a Director’s Cut of the original Dalai Lama Renaissance. Dalai Lama Awakening is a completely new cinematic and poetic edit with 35 minutes of new previously unseen footage, as well as a completely new music soundtrack.”
Aside from featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama (and narrated by actor Harrison Ford), Dalai Lama Awakening features innovative thinkers like Dr. Michael Beckwith (from The Secret), Quantum Physicists Fred Alan Wolf and Amit Goswami (from What the Bleep Do We Know), Harry Morgan Moses, Revolutionary Social Scientist Jean Houston, and others.
When it was released, Dalai Lama Renaissance received acclaim and praise:
Amy Wong of LA Yoga Magazine wrote: “it is a stunning tour-de-force [and an] intimate glimpse into the Dalai Lama’s life.”
Film Critic John Griffin of the Montreal Gazette called Dalai Lama Renaissance “a provocative, even enlightening film… fascinating, ravishingly beautiful and sonically soothing.”
And Film Threat Magazine’s Rick Kisonak said Dalai Lama Renaissance is a “comedy sensation,” adding, “I can’t remember the last time a movie made me laugh so hard.”
As successful and inspiring as the original Dalai Lama Renaissance was, Darvich felt that there was a deeper and more meaningful story to tell: something that more poetically and purely spoke to both the filmmaker and audiences. Darvich felt that audiences could go deeper into the characters and discover something about themselves.
After personally appearing in over 400 film screenings and Q&As with Dalai Lama Renaissance and listening to the cinematic journeys of audience members, Darvich felt that it was time to go back to the editing room in a deep and contemplative way, and create Dalai Lama Awakening while incorporating the insights and reflections that he received during the thousands of conversations with audience members.
In 2011 and 2013, Darvich also travelled back to India and filmed additional scenes and cinematic shots to include in Awakening.
Beginning October 1, 2013, Director Khashyar Darvich and his new Dalai Lama Awakening will preview for a select number of audiences and venues, where Darvich and audiences will speak afterwards during a Q&A to travel deeper into the special gifts that each of us uniquely have to share with the world.
“Since the goal and intention of our films is to serve the Greatest Good and offer a transformational and inspiring experience to audiences,” says Director Darvich, “I feel that it is important that I travel with this film so that the audience and I can speak and share the inner journey of personal transformation illustrated in the story, and so our moment together becomes a more magnified powerful and heart-felt experience.”
“After each screening,” Darvich says, “it felt deeply fulfilling that audience members would come up to me and tell me that they felt moved and even changed by having watched the film.”
The official world-wide release of the film will be on January 1, 2014, and wider tours of The UK-Ireland, Australia, United States and Canada are currently being scheduled.
To host a Special Sneak Preview screening (and Director Q&A) of Dalai Lama Awakening for your community, please visit: http://dalailamafilm.com/host-screening.html , or email us at Bookings (at) DalaiLamaFilm (dot) com.
To witness how the Dalai Lama Renaissance film (and Q&As by Director Khashyar Darvich) have inspired and impacted audiences around the world, you may watch this 9 minute mini-documentary featuring footage from screenings and audience Q&A’s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlWSfdNFBJw
The official film trailer for the original Dalai Lama Renaissance film, is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ1L2uopTwU (The trailer for Dalai Lama Awakening will be released soon)
The film’s official Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/https://www.facebook.com/DalaiLamaAwakening
Darvich and Wakan Films are in post-production for 7 additional inspiring documentary films, two of which also feature the Dalai Lama, which will be released within the next year. For more information, please visit: www.wakan.com
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