About the Films

THE DHAMMA BROTHERS

East meets West in the Deep South. An overcrowded maximum-security prison—the end of the line in Alabama’s correctional system—is dramatically changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program.

Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark is ignited when it becomes the first maximum-security prison in North America to hold an extended Vipassana retreat, an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting ten days.

The Dhamma Brothers tells a dramatic tale of human potential and transformation as it closely follows and documents the stories of the prison inmates at Donaldson Correction Facility who enter into this arduous and intensive program. This film, with the power to dismantle stereotypes about men behind prison bars also, in the words of  Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking), “gives you hope for the human race."

HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE

Move over “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance!” here comes Zen and the Art of a Good Meal!

Filmmaker Doris Dörrie turns her attention to Buddhism and that age-old saying, you are what you eat.

In How To Cook Your Life, Dörrie enlists the help of the charismatic Zen Master Edward Espe Brown to explain the guiding principles of Zen Buddhism as they apply to the preparation of food as well as life itself.

“How a person goes about dealing with the ingredients for his meals” explains Dörrie “says a lot about him.”

“How To Cook Your Life teaches us to be attentive in our everyday dealings with the most mundane things and also open our eyes to one of the most beautiful occupations: cooking.”

CAVE IN THE SNOW

Tenzin Palmo, a British born Buddhist nun emerges from twelve years isolation in a Himalayan cave to face her biggest challenge yet....After meeting her guru in India in 1964, British-born Tenzin Palmo was ordained as one of the first western Tibetan Buddhist nuns. In 1976 she isolated herself for twelve years in a remote Himalayan cave to deepen her meditation practice.

Here she faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, near-starvation and avalanches; grew her own food and slept in a traditional wooden meditation box, three-feet-square - she never lay down. Her goal - to gain enlightenment as a woman.

Now dedicated to raising the education and status of nuns within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition she has embarked on an ambitious project to build a nunnery for young women from Tibet and the Himalayan border regions and an international retreat centre in north India with the aim to help women achieve spiritual excellence.

Tenzin Palmo is a leading figure in the last frontier of women's liberation - that of equal spiritual rights. (source: http://www.firelight.com.au/cave.html).