Last weekend I attended the awards ceremony at the 14th Annual Alliance for Community Media, Northeast Regional Film Festival with Marie Favorito while Karin Sorvik held the annual Healing Tao Society Dinner and Gathering in New York City.
There were 500 entries in this film festival and we won second place in the Professional Documentary category for “How it All Began, Origins of the Healing Tao System”. Karin Sorvik and I are grateful to be honored in this way. If you would like to see a trailer and learn more about the film click here to view the trailer.
We plan to have more screenings in 2012 – so far we plan to show it in Watertown MA, USA in the early winter and again on June 15th, 2012 in New York City when GrandMaster Mantak Chia is in New York City leading a teacher training.
We are having the film translated for Spanish sub-titles. We hope other language translations are forth coming to reach a broader audience. We have been contacted by other film festivals asking us to enter this film in their festivals. Namely, one that will be launched in December called ‘Spirit Enlightened.’ This film festival is focused on the following.
“Spirit Enlightened Film Festival…aspires to trace the spirit that has led the humanity through centuries & civilizations and is in the making of our future. The festival hopes to explore with you, ‘That’ which envelops to infuse & evolve the individual as well as collective being, expands our vision of time as well as place, enlivens our hearts, and enlightens our species to transcend the present state of being for the mystical new – the next state of supramental self. Lets observe & feel this divine/enlightened spirit in the moment of its performance, in the midst of humanity now and forever, through film-media.”
Karin and I are thrilled to have been asked to participate in this film festival. Our film contributes knowledge of a path of Taoism tracing steps from the Far East to Western civilization back in the 1970′s. A path that reveals a time in history when Yoga was practiced only in basements and Martial Arts found only in the movies, a time when Taoist Internal Alchemy was not accessible to the western world. It was at this time that Master Mantak Chia, encouraged by his own Master, came to America with a dream to share his knowledge of Taoist Wisdom with others.
Scripting the Story
The Timeline
Early seekers of the Tao found him in a small office in Chinatown, New York City in the mid 1970′s and the Healing Tao system was born becoming a bridge between East and West. Karin and I traveled the world to interview Master Chia and those early seekers who reveal….”How it All Began.”
In this film you’ll discover:
• How the Healing Tao System was established in the USA, from it’s early beginnings in downtown Chinatown, NYC.
• Interviews with GrandMaster Mantak Chia.
• Interviews with the first western students of Master Chia: Sharon Smith, Gunther Weil, Raven Cohan and Ron Diana.
• Also Senior Instructors of the Healing Tao System; Juan Li, Michael Winn, Marie Favorito, Minke De Vos, Renu Li.
• How the extraordinary paintings of the esoteric meditation practices were brought to life.
• How Mantak Chia’s teacher was given these esoteric teachings by his Grand Master deep in the Chinese mountains.
