Donations on behalf of specific films are accepted by Buddhist Film Foundation, Inc. (BFF) and are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by US law. Please visit the individual film websites or contact the .
Current projects with BFF fiscal sponsorship are:
Arising Light: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
and the Birth of a New Era in India
Country: USA/India
Producer: Navaloka Productions; David Blundell, Director
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.
Buddha Future
Country: USA/India
Producer: Thunderbolt Creations; Director: Charlee Parkinson
Status: post-production
Official website: www.theroaringlions.com
Chronicles the journey of a young American woman in India in search of a vision of a peaceful future. Encounters with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Ogyen Thinley Dorjee the 17th Karmapa, Tai Situ Rinpoche and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, among others, provide insights and inspiration from Tibetan Buddhist perspectives.
Buddha’s Lost Children
Country: Netherlands/Burma/Thailand
Producer: EMS Films; Director: Mark Verkerk
Status: released
Official website: www.buddhaslostchildren.com
Purchase DVD now.
- 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.
Dreaming Buddhas (series)
Country: China
Producer: Commonfolk China; Director: Edward Burger
Status: production
Producer’s website: www.commonfolkchina.com
Dreaming Buddhas is a series of 25-minute documentary films designed for educators teaching Chinese Buddhism and Chinese/East Asian culture. Crafted under the guidance of scholars, these short films will supplement classroom lectures and readings by offering the images and sounds of daily life, ritual and practice in Chinese Buddhist monasteries today. Resident monastics, laymen and masters describe in their own words life inside China’s most traditional and respected, yet undocumented Buddhist communities. From the director of Amongst White Clouds and the forthcoming A Life in Shadows, both filmed on location in China.
Every War Has Two Losers
Country: USA
Producer: Zinc Films; Director: Haydn Reiss
Status: completed, festival screenings, DVD release
Official website: www.everywar.com
Purchase DVD now.
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: post-production
Official website: www.intothecurrent.org
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.
Meditate and Destroy
Country: USA
Producer: Blue Lotus Films; Director: Sarah Fisher
Status: completed, distributed by Alive Mind
Official website: www.meditateanddestroy.com
Purchase DVD now.
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: completed, festival screenings
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.
Refuge–The Journeys
Country: USA
Producer: MDS Productions; Director: John Halpern
Status: post-production
Official website: www.mdsfilms.com
Feature length documentary about Buddhism coming to America and the dramatic merging of East and West at a time critical to the survival of both. It is told through personal narratives of the Dalai Lama, Martin Scorsese, Dzongzar Khyentse Rinpoche, Oliver Stone, Ani Tenzin Palmo, Bernardo Bertolucci, the Khyenpo Brothers, Melissa Mathison, Philip Glass, David Chadwick and others.
The story begins with the 1959 Chinese invasion and the parallel period of western interest in buddhadharma. It culminates with the profusion of films about Buddhism, the growth of Buddhist centers and popularity of the Dalai Lama and Buddhist concepts in the west and internationally. Refuge–The Journeys addresses the essential nuances, mutual romances, harsh realities and ecstasies of the Buddhist/Western theme against the backdrop and drama of a world in transition and change since the mid 1950s up to today.
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
Purchase DVD now.
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 biographic 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.
