11 DAY EVENT ATTRACTS OVER 15,000 ATTENDEES; PUBLIC EVENTS DRAW 50,000
Most Successful Independent Fest in Mexico City
Twenty-five Films from Over a Dozen Nations
Sixteen Mexico Premieres
Eighty Program Events in Five Venues
The 2008 International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF) closed out its 11 day run last night with sold out events all over Mexico City. This was the first IBFF in Latin America, and it attracted over 15,000 ticket holders and was featured in dozens of news stories on television, radio and print. In addition, two public events in the Zocalo, the main civic square, drew an estimated 50,000 attendees.
The sold out final day Showcase Presentation at the Centro Nacional de las Artes of Light of Asia (Prem Sanyas), a rare 1925 German/Indian co-production based on Sir Edwin Arnold's famous 19th century book, was a resounding success. The silent black and white film was accompanied by a live original musical performance by a group led by sitarist Sidartha Siliceo, with noted Mexican vocalist Susana Zabaleta and Tibetan Buddhist monks from Gaden Jamgonling Monastery in Nepal led by Geshe Dorji Gyaltsen. Lama Tenzin Wangyal and Ven. Tenzin Priyadarshi attended, and each offered invocations.
Public events in Mexico City's Zocalo included an unprecedented encounter between a group of indigenous Mexican shamans and the six monks from Gaden Jamgonling Monastery. The shamans offered smoke and chanting greetings and good wishes, and then led the monks through the masses of people gathered for Mexico's Day of the Dead events there until the monks mounted the main stage to chant and sound their horns and cymbals for world peace. The following evening the monks performed a fire puja ceremony there. An estimated total of over 50,000 people were on hand for these two events.
The opening night screening at the prestigious Cineteca Nacional was the Mexico premiere of Dreaming Lhasa, the dramatic feature debut of award-winning documentary veterans from India, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam (The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche, Shadow Circus). Filmed on location in northern India with a backdrop of the Himalayas, the story follows a mystery that explores the full range of expression within the Tibetan exile communities there.
Other titles included Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, Enlightenment Guaranteed, The Cup, Dedication: The Devotion of Matthieu Ricard, Monks in the Lab, Peace Is Every Step, In Search of Zhang Zhung and Milarepa. According to primary festival exhibitor Cinemex, this was the most successful independent film festival in Mexico.
Other events included a seminar, Buddhism and the Emergence of a New Science by Ven. Tenzin Priyadarshi, in association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a conference, The Encounter Between Science and Meditation presented by the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Ligmincha Institute featuring Lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Prof. Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D, and Prof. Alejandro Chaoul Reich, Ph.D.; and several other workshops, ceremonies and seminars.
IBFF's presentation partner was Samaya Foundation, an independent cultural organization based in Mexico City. Its executive director, Leonides Guadarrama, said "This was an historic event for Mexico, the first time this range of Buddhist content has been presented here, and all with Spanish subtitles or translation. Audiences were wonderfully diverse—in age, previous exposure and even region: we had people here from all over Mexico, plus Argentina, Venezuela, Holland, the US and elsewhere. We plan to work with the IBFF to bring these films and more to other cities here and throughout the Spanish-speaking world."
Samaya Foundation is in strategic partnership with Buddhist Film Society (BFS). The Mexico City IBFF comes after successful IBFF presentations in Los Angeles (2003), Washington, D.C.(2004) and San Francisco (2005) in the US; and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2006), and Singapore (2007). IBFFs are currently being planned for New York and Kyoto for 2009-10. Executive director Gaetano Kazuo Maida said, “We're extremely encouraged by the enthusiastic response we saw in Mexico City and look forward to continuing to work with Samaya Foundation. We were particularly gratified to see so many audience members for whom Buddhism was new, and at the same time were delighted to see the participation and support of the many thriving Buddhist groups in Mexico City."
The official Mexican website, in Spanish, is www.ibff2008mexico.org.
Local media contact (bi-lingual) in Mexico City is Claudia del Castillo claudia.delcastillo@consecuencias.net.
