Films
THE COFFEE SHOP
​Director: Doug LeConte
Genre: Documentary
This Mandala of Chenrezig was constructed by a group of monks from Drepung Gomang monastery at the Unitarian church in Thunder Bay Canada (2007).
The Mandala, a Tibetan sand painting, is an ancient art form of Tibetan Buddhism. The mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning cosmogram or "world in harmony." Every tantric system has its own mandala. For example, that of Lord Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig) symbolizes compassion as a central focus of the spiritual experience. These mandalas are created whenever a need for healing of the environment and living beings is felt. The monks consider our present age to be one of great need in this respect, and therefore are creating these mandalas where requested throughout their world tours. When finished, to symbolize the impermanence of all that exists, the colored sands are swept up and poured into a nearby river, lake or stream where the waters carry healing energies throughout the world.
NSI Online Short Film Festival 2010
Toronto Inependent Film Fest 2010
Indie Can Film Festival 2010
Bay Street Film Festival 2010
Best Short Documentary Akasha Metaphysical Film Festival 2011
Hub Film Festival 2011
COMMfest Film Festival 2011
CHENREZIG
CHENREZIG
THE COFFEE SHOP
​Director: Doug LeConte
Genre: Documentary
The following series of short videos were done with Frédérique Apffel-Marglin the author of “Subversive Spiritualities”. Frédérique shares a worldview in which the human, the non-human, as well as the community of spirits, are all kin to each other, treating nature as a Thou rather than an it. By ‘biocultural regeneration’ we mean to honor this integration of all life as well as the cyclicity of its rhythms. It is also meant to obviate the backward/advanced implications of more linear formulations.
The Sachamama Center for BioCultural Regeneration (SCBR) is a non-profit organization in the Peruvian High Amazon with a field station in the town of Lamas, Department of San Martin, Peru SCBR is bringing together an expanding collective of scholars, activists, and students that cross the North-South divide. The Center’s mission is to integrate politics and spirituality, activism and scholarship, biocultural regeneration and fair economic practices, with the goal of nurturing intercultural dialogue. SCBR's mission is to strengthen the ancestral legacies and other practices of the Kichwa-Lamistas in dialogue with them as well as to regenerate the pre-Colombian Amazonian Black Earth of millenial fertility, collaborating with the local Education Board of Lamas to teach this heritage of the pre-Colombian ancestors to the new generation in order to slow deforestation, improve the local agriculture and help solve the climate crisis.
​
​