Small miracle gets Dalai Lama film to fest
East Bay filmmaker struck by thieves, but they missed ‘The Great 14th’
Miracles do happen. Just ask Albany filmmaker Rosemary Rawcliffe.
She’s the director of the inspiring documentary “The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in His Own Words,” which receives its world premiere today at the Mill Valley Film Festival (it also screens Saturday). But over the summer, she suffered a devastating loss that put her production company Frame of Mind in peril.
When she walked into her Berkeley office on the morning of July 29, she discovered 20-30 years’ worth of of her team’s work had been snatched, along with $50,000 to $60,000 in equipment. The burglars had made off with hard drives, computers and other invaluable equipment; even mundane yet essential items such as receipts and legal papers were gone.
“I was horrified,” she said. “I walked in (Monday morning) and the place was stripped. Seven computers, all the hard drives. All gone.”
Rather than collapse, the Emmy-winning filmmaker remained resolute. Her 30-years-plus of Tibetan Buddhism practice, coupled with numerous conversations with the Dalai Lama in India — the bulk of her documentary — kept her from spiraling into despair.
“I don’t think I’ve realized yet how much strength I draw from the teachings,” she said. “They’re like a road map for when you are confused, hurt or depressed.”
Then the small miracle happened. During the cleanup, Rawcliffe discovered the thieves had overlooked a small hard drive. On it was the filmmaker’s Dalai Lama documentary; she had recently copied the film so she’d have a backup.
When Rawcliffe realized the film had been saved, she scrambled to get the job done.
The movie still needed editing and Rawcliffe estimated she’d need to spend an additional $30,000$40,000 to get the film prepped for a world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where she had premiered two of her previous films. She initiated a fundraiser, generating around $12,000.
“That was so helpful,” she said. “People really stepped up when they could. But there was nothing for people to do, nothing anyone else could do besides supporting us financially,” she said, pausing. “And wish us luck.”
And it turns out burglars weren’t the only adversary.
Rawcliffe says she was frequently asked why she didn’t back up her work on the cloud.
The reason? “Because we have been hacked to death because it’s about the Dalai Lama and the Chinese have buried us over the years,” she said.
Even Rawcliffe’s and the film’s Wikipedia pages and websites have been tampered with, she says, to the point where she said she took down her Wikipedia page.
Originally, Rawcliffe’s film was going to be a fictionalized feature-length drama co-starring the Dalai Lama. That idea blossomed while she was working on a third documentary in her Tibetan women series. She had interviewed the Dalai Lama and was in London talking to his younger brother, Tenzin Choegyal, who will attend today’s screening. He mentioned making a narrative feature anchored around his brother’s teachings.
She was stunned at first, and still tired from her previous project. But over time …
“I said, ‘Here’s the thing, you need to go talk to your brother because I’m not even going to entertain the idea of a feature film about him until he says he’s interested in doing it because I have to be fully engaged with him to do the research and do everything that we would need in order to craft a narrative script that’s fiction but based on reality.”
Every step of the way, the Dalai Lama agreed, Rawcliffe says, eventually giving approval to the screenplay written by John
Schimmel. They even underwent a script read with the Dalai Lama.
The biggest obstacle was funding. “And that’s where the major Chinese bugaboo came in,” she said, adding that the country exerts resistance to projects that deal with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism.
The movie project stalled, but with all the footage shot during her interviews, Rawcliffe swerved into making a unique documentary — a mix of archival footage along with the compassionate, soothing words of the Dalai Lama.
Rawcliffe hopes the spiritual leader’s unifying words will be the perfect salve in a time of shrill disharmony.
Ticket sales certainly reflect a hunger for compassion; the world premiere screening at the festival sold out in four minutes. (The festival says late tickets for both today’s and Saturday’s screenings might be released.)
“I’m so convinced that this is the antidote for what’s happening in parts of our country,” Rawcliffe said. “It’s an antidote for all of the hatred.”