Colorado Premier

The Dalai Lama’s Gift

THE DALAI LAMA’S GIFT, director Ed Bastian

In 1982 , a Buddhist monk teaching at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, made the bold request of the Dalai Lama to come and perform a rare ritual, never before done outside of India or Tibet: the Kalachakra, among the highest of the Buddhist tantric teachings. In just a few months, with a team of dedicated students, and cameras rolling, they constructed a temple and organized an event for over a thousand spiritual seekers, in a cornfield outside Madison. The incredible footage was tucked away in the Smithsonian vaults, until now. What unfolds is the story of a powerful ritual, its impact on the people that made it happen, and the meaning behind this ancient initiation. 76 minutes.

The film will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with HE Tulku Yeshi Rinpoche, musician Nawang Khechog and director Ed Bastian.

Pig at the Crossing

PIG AT THE CROSSING, director Khyentse Norbu

 Dolom, a YouTuber, has an affair with married Deki. She's pregnant. After his accidental death, Dolom's soul enters limbo. Guided to confront his past choices, he must relinquish attachments to move on or remain trapped indefinitely. 122 minutes.

World Premiere

Brakhage on Brakhage

BRAKHAGE ON BRAKHAGE, director Colin Still

Working outside the mainstream, the wildly prolific, visionary Stan Brakhage made more than 350 films over a half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” he turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy. 94 minutes.

O Mother Gaia - the World of Gary Snyder

O MOTHER GAIA - THE WORLD OF GARY SNYDER, director Colin Still

This is the first feature-length film documenting the life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet/activist Gary Snyder. A participant in the famed 1955 Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco that launched the Beat era (and the careers of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac), Snyder later lived and studied in Japan, becoming a Zen teacher. He is the model for the character of Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s bestselling novel, The Dharma Bums.

The film was skillfully assembled and remastered from the filmmaker’s original 1990s 16mm footage shot for British television, and offers a vivid self portrait of the famously elusive poet and essayist through his poems and commentary. Filmed on location at his Kitkitdizzie/Ring of Bone Zendo home in the Sierra and other locations connected with him, it also features key archival footage from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as contemporaneous readings and commentary by Peter Coyote, Jane Hirshfield, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Shoemaker, and Michael McClure, and a precious interview with Snyder’s late wife Carole Koda. 102 minutes

Wisdom of Happiness

WISDOM OF HAPPINESS, directors Barbara Miller & Philip Delaquis

WISDOM OF HAPPINESS is a deeply intimate and highly cinematic documentary featuring the Dalai Lama, who, at nearly 90 years old, offers practical advice for navigating the 21st century's challenges. The film captures the Dalai Lama speaking directly to viewers, creating a sense of a private audience, and shares his timeless wisdom on achieving inner peace and happiness for everyone.

WISDOM OF HAPPINESS is a profound, new cinematic exploration of the innermost world of the Dalai Lama, perfectly attuned to our times. In an intimate heart-to-heart, the world’s greatest ambassador of compassion invites everyone along for a journey to the source of happiness. 90 minutes.

One Mind - A Zen Pilgrimage

ONE MIND A ZEN PILGRIMAGE, director Edward A. Burger

ONE MIND is a rare cinematic portrait of life inside one of China’s most austere and revered Zen communities. The monks at Zhenru Chan Monastery continue to uphold a strict monastic code established over 1200 years ago by the founding patriarchs of Zen in China. In harmony with the land that sustains them, the monks operate an organic farm, grow tea, and harvest bamboo to fuel their kitchen fires. At the heart of this community, a group of cloistered meditators sit in silence for 8 hours every day. Suggesting a Zen version of the critically acclaimed film Into Great Silence, ONE MIND offers an intimate glimpse into a thriving Buddhist monastery in modern China. 81 minutes

The Lion’s Roar

THE LION’S ROAR, director Mark Elliott

This is the masterful portrait of the late 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, the great Tibetan Buddhist master known as the Black Hat Lama. The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, one of the four great lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. His line of successive reincarnations has its origins in the 13th century when it was the first to identify tulkus, reincarnations of Buddhist teachers. He is recognized as the embodiment of the teachings of his lineage, one that traces its source from teacher to disciple through Tibet’s great teachers Milarepa and Marpa to India’s Naropa and Tilopa all the way back to the Shakyamuni Buddha. 50 minutes

Women of Tibet: Gylayum Chemo - The Great Mother 

WOMEN OF TIBET: GYALYUM CHEMO - THE GREAT MOTHER, director Rosemary Rawcliffe

Women of Tibet: Gyalyum Chemo - The Great Mother recounts the compelling story of Dekyi Tsering, the mother of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Dekyi Tsering, known by Tibetans as 'Gyalyum Chemo' or 'Great Mother,' gave birth to 16 children, three of whom were recognized as incarnate lamas. Weaving anecdotal threads and personal reflections from her children, grandchildren, and friends, with never before seen photographs from their family collections and rare footage of Tibet, the film offers an intimate glimpse into Tibet's first family and the woman who inspired them. His Holiness talks about how his mother helped shape the man he is today and the relationship between healthy family and healthy humanity, and how it all begins with a mothers love. Dr. Marion Woodman (Addiction to Perfection), Alice Walker (The Color Purple), and Angeles Arrien (The Second Half of Life) link this uniquely Tibetan story to a much broader perspective of motherhood and how the Great Mother lives within each of us. 97 minutes

Blessings: The Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns of Tibet

BLESSINGS: THE TSOKNYI NANGCHEN NUNS OF TIBET, director Victress Hitchcock

In 2005, Tsokyni Rinpoche, a renowned Buddhist teacher, led a group of Western women on a journey into a remote mountainous region of Eastern Tibet to visit nunneries where 3000 women were practicing an ancient yogic tradition of Buddhist teachings. This is the original longer version of the film that documented this extraordinary journey. 104 minutes