Community Movie.... AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda Tuesday, December 30, 7 p.m. Director: Paola di Florio and Lisa Leeman Rating: PG Runtime: 87 minutes AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, an unconventional biopic about the Hindu Swami who brought yoga and meditation to the West in the 1920s will screen at Arena Theater on Tuesday, December 30, at 7 p.m. The presentation is made possible by Surf Therapy Yoga, located in Point Arena, and a suggested $10 donation is requested. Paramahansa Yogananda authored the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, which has sold millions of copies worldwide and is a go-to book for seekers, philosophers and yoga enthusiasts today. (Apparently, it was the only book that Steve Jobs had on his iPad.) By personalizing his own quest for enlightenment and sharing his struggles along the path, Yogananda made ancient Vedic teachings accessible to a modern audience, attracting many followers and inspiring the millions who practice yoga today. Filmed over three years with the participation of 30 countries around the world, the documentary explores why millions today have turned their attention inwards in pursuit of self-realization and features interviews with Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Deepak Chopra and many others. Archival material from the life of Yogananda (who died in 1952) creates a spine for the narrative, but the film stretches the dimensions of a standard biography. The footage includes stylized interviews, metaphoric imagery and recreations, taking us from holy pilgrimages in India to Harvards Divinity School and its cutting-edge physics labs, from the Center for Science and Spirituality at the University of Pennsylvania to the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, California. By evoking the journey of the soul as it pushes its way through the oppression of the human ego and delusion of the material world, the film creates an experiential immersion into the unseen realms. AWAKE is ultimately the story of humanity itself: the universal struggle of all beings to free themselves from suffering and to seek lasting happiness. Using a seamless mix of re-creations and fascinating true footage, this very even-tempered documentary takes its audience all the way through a saints life, from his first sensations in the womb to that moment in 1952 when, having recited a poem to a large crowd at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, he exited his body just like that....In between those events he changed the Western world. On AWAKE / From the Maui Film Festival website
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 01:04:45 +0000
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