13 is a lucky number for the Spirit Film Festival in TA
The 13th Spirit Film Festival will take place at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque from November 7-9.
The festival features 20 films and 30 events, all of them focused on different aspects of spirituality.
According to the festival’s website: “Spirit Film Festival is dedicated to spread ideas that contribute to the evolution of consciousness and inspire transformation through films. Our purpose is to showcase cinematic gems that empower the audience to live kinder, wiser, and more enlightened lives.”
The Spirit Film Festival will show films that deal with the study of consciousness, alternative medicine, body-mind science, the spirit of freedom and sustainable living.
The festival will open with Fantastic Fungi... The Magic Beneath Us by Louie Schwartzberg. It features amazingly beautiful time-lapse photography and experts speaking about the potential of mushrooms to heal and change lives.
The closing-night film will be 2040 by Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film), in which the director embarks on journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them into mainstream use.
Other films include Jamie
Catto’s Becoming Nobody, a celebration and exploration of Ram Dass, the father of the Western spiritual culture and self-help movement.
Visions of a Teacher by Jaap Verhoeven looks at the life and work of Khyentse Norbu, also known as Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, an incarnation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, who has directed several acclaimed films, including The Cup and Travelers and Magicians. The film follows him to Nepal, where he is shooting his latest film, and explores how he switches between working with the film crew and performing ancient Buddhist rituals.
It Takes a School by Tami Gros and Maya Rothschild is one of the Israeli films in the program and examines how a failing school in south Tel Aviv become one of the best primary schools in Israel through the introduction of an innovative method incorporating meditation techniques, yoga practices and guided imagery.
Among the special events will be “Cinema Nirvana,” lectures on subjects related to the films by a number of leading Israeli academics, which will precede the screenings. There will be meetings with guests from abroad and workshops as well.
The festival is sponsored by the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality and Deplus.
For more information, go to the festival website at https:// www.spiritfestival.co.il/