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.

This screening will be followed by a conversation between Sacred distributor Jim Browne and Zen priest Malik Walker and Yael Shy, the Senior Director of Global Spiritual Life at NYU.

Co-presented by Global Spiritual Life at NYU.

About the Speakers

Malik Walker is a Zen priest in the tradition and lineage of Kodo Sawaki and Taisen Deshimaru. He received Bodhisattva and priest ordination at the New Orleans Zen Temple, where he was given the Dharma name Hokyu (meaning “Deeply Studies the Dharma”). Since 2007, he has been privileged to lead and provide beginning meditation instruction in a variety of places, most notably the Center for Buddhist Life at Yale University and with the Interfaith Zen Fellowship at Fordham University. He has earned a BA and an MA in religion and is currently completing a doctorate in theology at Fordham University. Malik is a Buddhist chaplain for NYU’s Global Spiritual Life Center as well as the founder and resident monk of the Myrtle Avenue Zen Fellowship, an affiliate dojo of the American Zen Association that meets regularly in Brooklyn, New York.

Yael Shy is the Senior Director of the NYU Global Spiritual Life Center and the NYU “˜Of Many’ Institute for Multifaith and Spiritual Leadership, as well as the Founder and Director of MindfulNYU, the largest campus-wide mindfulness initiative in the country. She teaches regularly at MNDFL in NYC and is a sought-after speaker, teacher, and writer on meditation, interfaith engagement, and spirituality. Yael is particularly interested in the intersections between Judaism, psychology, meditation, Zen Buddhism, and social transformation. She is the author of the forthcoming book What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, November 2017).

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.