By Sarah Phelan - MetroActive
March 15, 2006
Fifth annual Santa Cruz Film Festival
Rumi With a View: Filmmaker Tina Petrova's documentary on the mystic poet will be part of a March 24 Sufi celebration at the Rio.
Why did Canadian filmmaker Tina Petrova, who was brought up Roman Catholic and became a Tibetan Buddhist, make a documentary about Muslim mystic Rumi, a man born in Afghanistan at the time of Genghis Khan and whose astonishingly modern poetry continues to outsell Shakespeare, 9/11 notwithstanding?
The answer begins in the Mojave Desert, which is where Petrova was chanting a mantra while driving a mountain road when her car hit black ice in 1997. This confluence of events sent her hurtling off a 6,000-foot cliff--and toward the making of Rumi--Turning Ecstatic. The documentary, which weaves her personal journey into a planetary excursion, screens at the Rio Theatre on May 24 as part of an evening of Sufi music, film, poetry and dance.
Trapped upside-down in her seat belt, her ribs broken, Petrova, who was afraid her gas tank would explode, used her yoga skills to go into a full lotus position from which she was able to crawl through the spiderweb of glass that was once her car's windshield. Though she escaped with her life, rebirth was not easy. In a body brace and suffering pain so debilitating that she could not work, Petrova despairingly did a novena to the Virgin Mary on Dec. 23, 1998.
"That night, Rumi came to me in a dream and told me to bring together a group of world-class performers and create a live event," says Petrova of the odyssey that led her to world-renowned Rumi translator Coleman Barks and, from there, to a successful event in Toronto which Canada's Vision TV urged her to make into a documentary about Rumi and Sufism.
"They saw my personal story as a doorway into Sufism, they told me it was what made it accessible," recalls Petrova, who uses her personal experience as a portal into the poetry of Rumi, the ecstasy of Sufism and the oneness of God.
Along the way, Petrova met many Sufi luminaries, including the Santa Cruz-based Kabir Helminski, who directs the Threshold Society, which works to apply Sufi principles to modern life. On March 24, when Petrova's film screens, Helminski will direct a live performance by Baranka, a Sufi music ensemble, featuring Sonia Drakulic and Gari Haggedus, Hamed Nikpay, Daud Jerrahi and some of the Whirling Dervishes of the Threshold Society.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Film Fest's Coming Attraction: a Sufi Evening
By Sarah Phelan - MetroActive
March 15, 2006
Fifth annual Santa Cruz Film Festival
Rumi With a View: Filmmaker Tina Petrova's documentary on the mystic poet will be part of a March 24 Sufi celebration at the Rio.
Why did Canadian filmmaker Tina Petrova, who was brought up Roman Catholic and became a Tibetan Buddhist, make a documentary about Muslim mystic Rumi, a man born in Afghanistan at the time of Genghis Khan and whose astonishingly modern poetry continues to outsell Shakespeare, 9/11 notwithstanding?
The answer begins in the Mojave Desert, which is where Petrova was chanting a mantra while driving a mountain road when her car hit black ice in 1997. This confluence of events sent her hurtling off a 6,000-foot cliff--and toward the making of Rumi--Turning Ecstatic. The documentary, which weaves her personal journey into a planetary excursion, screens at the Rio Theatre on May 24 as part of an evening of Sufi music, film, poetry and dance.
Trapped upside-down in her seat belt, her ribs broken, Petrova, who was afraid her gas tank would explode, used her yoga skills to go into a full lotus position from which she was able to crawl through the spiderweb of glass that was once her car's windshield. Though she escaped with her life, rebirth was not easy. In a body brace and suffering pain so debilitating that she could not work, Petrova despairingly did a novena to the Virgin Mary on Dec. 23, 1998.
"That night, Rumi came to me in a dream and told me to bring together a group of world-class performers and create a live event," says Petrova of the odyssey that led her to world-renowned Rumi translator Coleman Barks and, from there, to a successful event in Toronto which Canada's Vision TV urged her to make into a documentary about Rumi and Sufism.
"They saw my personal story as a doorway into Sufism, they told me it was what made it accessible," recalls Petrova, who uses her personal experience as a portal into the poetry of Rumi, the ecstasy of Sufism and the oneness of God.
Along the way, Petrova met many Sufi luminaries, including the Santa Cruz-based Kabir Helminski, who directs the Threshold Society, which works to apply Sufi principles to modern life. On March 24, when Petrova's film screens, Helminski will direct a live performance by Baranka, a Sufi music ensemble, featuring Sonia Drakulic and Gari Haggedus, Hamed Nikpay, Daud Jerrahi and some of the Whirling Dervishes of the Threshold Society.
March 15, 2006
Fifth annual Santa Cruz Film Festival
Rumi With a View: Filmmaker Tina Petrova's documentary on the mystic poet will be part of a March 24 Sufi celebration at the Rio.
Why did Canadian filmmaker Tina Petrova, who was brought up Roman Catholic and became a Tibetan Buddhist, make a documentary about Muslim mystic Rumi, a man born in Afghanistan at the time of Genghis Khan and whose astonishingly modern poetry continues to outsell Shakespeare, 9/11 notwithstanding?
The answer begins in the Mojave Desert, which is where Petrova was chanting a mantra while driving a mountain road when her car hit black ice in 1997. This confluence of events sent her hurtling off a 6,000-foot cliff--and toward the making of Rumi--Turning Ecstatic. The documentary, which weaves her personal journey into a planetary excursion, screens at the Rio Theatre on May 24 as part of an evening of Sufi music, film, poetry and dance.
Trapped upside-down in her seat belt, her ribs broken, Petrova, who was afraid her gas tank would explode, used her yoga skills to go into a full lotus position from which she was able to crawl through the spiderweb of glass that was once her car's windshield. Though she escaped with her life, rebirth was not easy. In a body brace and suffering pain so debilitating that she could not work, Petrova despairingly did a novena to the Virgin Mary on Dec. 23, 1998.
"That night, Rumi came to me in a dream and told me to bring together a group of world-class performers and create a live event," says Petrova of the odyssey that led her to world-renowned Rumi translator Coleman Barks and, from there, to a successful event in Toronto which Canada's Vision TV urged her to make into a documentary about Rumi and Sufism.
"They saw my personal story as a doorway into Sufism, they told me it was what made it accessible," recalls Petrova, who uses her personal experience as a portal into the poetry of Rumi, the ecstasy of Sufism and the oneness of God.
Along the way, Petrova met many Sufi luminaries, including the Santa Cruz-based Kabir Helminski, who directs the Threshold Society, which works to apply Sufi principles to modern life. On March 24, when Petrova's film screens, Helminski will direct a live performance by Baranka, a Sufi music ensemble, featuring Sonia Drakulic and Gari Haggedus, Hamed Nikpay, Daud Jerrahi and some of the Whirling Dervishes of the Threshold Society.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment