Sacred

2016, Thomas Lennon, USA, 86 min.

“A kaleidoscopic travelogue depicting demonstrations of faith worldwide.” —Andy Webster,The New York Times

Shot by more than forty filmmaking teams around the world, the film immerses the viewer in the daily use of faith and spiritual practice. At a time when religious hatreds dominate the world’s headlines, this film explores faith as primary human experience, and how people turn to ritual and prayer to navigate the milestones and crises of private life. The film’s director commissioned or sourced footage from top independent filmmakers from more than 25 countries—and a wide range of religious traditions—each team contributing a single scene. The film, sweeping in its global reach, yet intensely intimate, is a tour de force that unifies these scenes into a single work, told without narration, without experts and, for long stretches, without words at all.

Each of the six screenings will be followed by a conversation.

A book signing of Urban Monk: Exploring Karma, Consciousness, and the Divine by Pandit Dasa will follow the screening.

Co-presented by Global Spiritual Life at NYU.

About the Speakers

Pandit Dasa is a mindfulness expert and meditation teacher. He currently serves as the Hindu chaplain at NYU and the Interfaith Chaplain for Union Theological Seminary. He lived as a Hindu monk in New York City for 15 years. He currently trains corporations on mindfulness practices. He has spoken at Google, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, the World Government Summit, and many other organizations. He has also been featured on PBS, NPR, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and he writes for the Huffington Post.

Jim Browne, the distributor of Sacred, has been programming and producing film and video projects in New York City for over 20 years. As a film programmer, he got his start with the experimental film series Reel Time at Performance Space 122. After leaving P.S. 122, he started a touring film series called the People’s Cinema. These programs often mixed live music with short films, programmed around specific themes. In 2004, he produced and programmed the film component of the Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues & Ideas, a citywide cultural festival around NYC. He was a programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival from 2006 to 2010 and has recently been named programmer for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. He is a graduate of Bard College.