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Screenings in Johannesburg - now at two venues!
Forthcoming in Johannesburg - now at 2 venues!
Friday 6 March at 6.30pm at Sage Healing Centre
Into Great Silence – 162 minutes of silence – a masterpiece on the Grande Chartreuse: one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries.
Wednesday 11 March at Zenatude
How to know God - with DEEPAK CHOPRA - An engaging enquiry into Quantum Physics and Divinity/Spirituality
JOHANNESBURG: Monthly screenings first Friday of month at Sage Healing & Training Centre, 5 Geers Ave, Greenside, 2034. Tel 011 486 1096 mobile 083 325 8495 (Belinda Peralta).
And at Zenatude second Wednesday of the month at Zenatude, Rivonia Crossing Shopping Centre Phase Two, Cnr Witkoppen & Achter Roads, Rivonia. Tel 011 234 3343 to book – Booking essential. www.zenatude.co.za
INTO GREAT SILENCE
A meditation on life. A contemplation of time. Silence.
An internationally acclaimed documentary by Philip Gröning.
Germany/Switzerland 2007, very few subtitles
Running time: 162 minutes
Nestled deep in the postcard-perfect French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is considered one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monk’s quarters for six months – filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one: it has no score, no voice-over and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. One of the most mesmerising and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created, Into Great Silence dissolves the border between screen and audience with a total immersion into the hush of monastic life. More meditation than documentary, it’s a rare, transformative experience for all.
(And yes, this monastery is where the great Chartreuse liqueurs are created!)
Transcendent, transporting experience. Los Angeles Times
Intoxicating. Enlarges your concepts of movies and life. Chicago Tribune
Breathtaking. Newsweek
Utterly spellbinding. New York Times
DIRECTOR PHILIP GRONIG’S NOTES
It’s not easy. Not easy at all to write about a film that gets by with nearly no words, a film that is truly as far away from language as a film can be, and far, too, from any discursive processes.
How does one make a film that, more than depicting a monastery, becomes a monastery itself? How? I only know that at some point, this film took on form, became a monastery space and not a narrative. Altogether I spent nearly six months in the monastery of Grande Chartreuse. I took part in the life there, in the daily routine and lived like a monk in a cell. I took part in the incredible balance between seclusion and community. I shot a film there, recorded sound, edited. A voyage into silence.
ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE
The sole elements of language apart from the brief moments in which the monks speak to one another – as they do during their weekly chapters and their weekly walks – are verses, some of which are repeated throughout the film. In the life of a contemplative monk, the same prayers and psalms keep reappearing again and again. His entire life. Contemplation as the ever-new view upon the same. Just as the prayer changes meaning during the life of a monk – gaining deeper meaning, losing meaning and regaining it – these verses trigger a similar effect with the viewer: insight through repetition.
The film shows the changing of time, seasons and the oft-repeated elements of the day, of the prayer. Faces: an intense close-up of each monk. A very physical world (a cut apple, meals brought to the cells, the shaving of heads). The monks praying. The physical world and the turning away from that world.
THE NIGHT OFFICE (“NOCTURNO”)
Every midnight at 12.15am the monks of the Grande Chartreuse leave their cells in the deep dark to meet and sing matins and laudes: up to three hours of oration, psalms, lectures and deep silence. A great, intimate time of inner reflection and outer ritual. For nearly six months I shared this experience with the monks.
During these long and often very cold hours I realised that these same psalms, lessons, prayers have been sung here, in this same place, for nearly 1,000 years. This was continuity well beyond imagination. The “Nocturno” felt to me like the core of Carthusian life and spirituality. Completely free of everyday functionality, the Nocturno expresses the focus of the Carthusian order: contemplation.
HOW TO KNOW GOD
with DEEPAK CHOPRA
“God is another name for infinite intelligence”
An engaging enquiry into Quantum Physics and Divinity/Spirituality
Running time: 67 minutes
Produced in 2006 and based on his book with the same title, Deepak Chopra playfully looks at quantum physics and its role in daily life, in spirituality and in psychic phenomena. He contemplates the intricate workings of the universe and our role in it and explores concepts such as synchronicity, clairvoyance, miracles and godhood.
Chopra, as articulate and engaging as ever, takes us on a journey to some of the world’s sacred sites - including the pyramids of Egypt and the sacred river Ganges in India - with mundane reality in the form of the casinos in Las Vegas cleverly used as backdrop. Visually stunning with the addition of some quality visual effects.
Here are a few gems from the film
* Infinite intelligence can't be crippled by such a tiny thing as disbelief. Both the secular and sacred are one.
* A god is myself in disguise.
* Time is just a cosmic convenience to keep everything from happening at once.
* How can we not see Intelligence behind such precision as the Big Bang?
* Eventually, you can only know what God is thinking by becoming God yourself.
* Chaos is only an illusion. It's what you see when you can't see far enough.
* God is our highest instinct to know ourselves.
Friday 6 March at 6.30pm at Sage Healing Centre
Into Great Silence – 162 minutes of silence – a masterpiece on the Grande Chartreuse: one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries.
Wednesday 11 March at Zenatude
How to know God - with DEEPAK CHOPRA - An engaging enquiry into Quantum Physics and Divinity/Spirituality
JOHANNESBURG: Monthly screenings first Friday of month at Sage Healing & Training Centre, 5 Geers Ave, Greenside, 2034. Tel 011 486 1096 mobile 083 325 8495 (Belinda Peralta).
And at Zenatude second Wednesday of the month at Zenatude, Rivonia Crossing Shopping Centre Phase Two, Cnr Witkoppen & Achter Roads, Rivonia. Tel 011 234 3343 to book – Booking essential. www.zenatude.co.za
INTO GREAT SILENCE
A meditation on life. A contemplation of time. Silence.
An internationally acclaimed documentary by Philip Gröning.
Germany/Switzerland 2007, very few subtitles
Running time: 162 minutes
Nestled deep in the postcard-perfect French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is considered one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monk’s quarters for six months – filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one: it has no score, no voice-over and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. One of the most mesmerising and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created, Into Great Silence dissolves the border between screen and audience with a total immersion into the hush of monastic life. More meditation than documentary, it’s a rare, transformative experience for all.
(And yes, this monastery is where the great Chartreuse liqueurs are created!)
Transcendent, transporting experience. Los Angeles Times
Intoxicating. Enlarges your concepts of movies and life. Chicago Tribune
Breathtaking. Newsweek
Utterly spellbinding. New York Times
DIRECTOR PHILIP GRONIG’S NOTES
It’s not easy. Not easy at all to write about a film that gets by with nearly no words, a film that is truly as far away from language as a film can be, and far, too, from any discursive processes.
How does one make a film that, more than depicting a monastery, becomes a monastery itself? How? I only know that at some point, this film took on form, became a monastery space and not a narrative. Altogether I spent nearly six months in the monastery of Grande Chartreuse. I took part in the life there, in the daily routine and lived like a monk in a cell. I took part in the incredible balance between seclusion and community. I shot a film there, recorded sound, edited. A voyage into silence.
ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE
The sole elements of language apart from the brief moments in which the monks speak to one another – as they do during their weekly chapters and their weekly walks – are verses, some of which are repeated throughout the film. In the life of a contemplative monk, the same prayers and psalms keep reappearing again and again. His entire life. Contemplation as the ever-new view upon the same. Just as the prayer changes meaning during the life of a monk – gaining deeper meaning, losing meaning and regaining it – these verses trigger a similar effect with the viewer: insight through repetition.
The film shows the changing of time, seasons and the oft-repeated elements of the day, of the prayer. Faces: an intense close-up of each monk. A very physical world (a cut apple, meals brought to the cells, the shaving of heads). The monks praying. The physical world and the turning away from that world.
THE NIGHT OFFICE (“NOCTURNO”)
Every midnight at 12.15am the monks of the Grande Chartreuse leave their cells in the deep dark to meet and sing matins and laudes: up to three hours of oration, psalms, lectures and deep silence. A great, intimate time of inner reflection and outer ritual. For nearly six months I shared this experience with the monks.
During these long and often very cold hours I realised that these same psalms, lessons, prayers have been sung here, in this same place, for nearly 1,000 years. This was continuity well beyond imagination. The “Nocturno” felt to me like the core of Carthusian life and spirituality. Completely free of everyday functionality, the Nocturno expresses the focus of the Carthusian order: contemplation.
HOW TO KNOW GOD
with DEEPAK CHOPRA
“God is another name for infinite intelligence”
An engaging enquiry into Quantum Physics and Divinity/Spirituality
Running time: 67 minutes
Produced in 2006 and based on his book with the same title, Deepak Chopra playfully looks at quantum physics and its role in daily life, in spirituality and in psychic phenomena. He contemplates the intricate workings of the universe and our role in it and explores concepts such as synchronicity, clairvoyance, miracles and godhood.
Chopra, as articulate and engaging as ever, takes us on a journey to some of the world’s sacred sites - including the pyramids of Egypt and the sacred river Ganges in India - with mundane reality in the form of the casinos in Las Vegas cleverly used as backdrop. Visually stunning with the addition of some quality visual effects.
Here are a few gems from the film
* Infinite intelligence can't be crippled by such a tiny thing as disbelief. Both the secular and sacred are one.
* A god is myself in disguise.
* Time is just a cosmic convenience to keep everything from happening at once.
* How can we not see Intelligence behind such precision as the Big Bang?
* Eventually, you can only know what God is thinking by becoming God yourself.
* Chaos is only an illusion. It's what you see when you can't see far enough.
* God is our highest instinct to know ourselves.