New documentary in development about Gandhi in the 21st century
"If humanity is to progress Gandhi is inescapable." Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our last film, Globalized Soul, our 16th, completed in the summer of 2011, quickly gained a huge audience and has yet to reach its peak. Globalized Soul was selected as "The Featured Film" of the 2011 UN International Day of Peace and broadcast as one of its global events. We were invited to hold the world premiere at The World Peace Festival in Berlin, where Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, commented that the movie "leaves you with a positive feeling that peace is possible if we know how to build it." Over tea with Dr. Gandhi we began to think about a new film biography of "Grandfather".
Our mission is to show a sustainable path for humanity through its mounting global crises. Nearly 30 years of experience in making spiritually, socially transformative movies tells us that growing billions on the planet are personally and collectively seeking the way to a just, peaceful, global civilization. There is no better guide to such a new humanity than Gandhi.
There are few better interpreters of the Mahatma than his grandson Arun who spent years of his childhood at "Grandfather's" feet, learning the lessons of nonviolence, commitment to social justice, and the self-sustaining, selfless ways to live in community. We asked Dr. Gandhi if he would consider being our primary interview in a new telling of the story of Mohandas, and, if we could accompany him to India, and film him at the sites of his grandfather's life.
Arun Gandhi agreed. We met him in India at the end of December, 2011, where we began filming what we have entitled, A Time For Great Souls.
Here are a few memorable moments: the songs and laughter of children of poverty-ridden brick-makers at a Gandhian school in Kolhapur who have been saved from child labor and its slavery and horrific abuse; the strong and transformed women of the Self Employed Women's Association who have continued Gandhi's commitment to women's empowerment and expanded it across the nation; the hundreds of bright-eyed, pure-faced, future Gandhi's at the university Gandhi founded in 1920, who spun as they sat transfixed, listening to Arun Gandhi tell stories of his grandfather, while he, himself, spun; the simple grandeur of Gandhi's ashrams, such as Kochrab, where Gandhi audaciously included "untouchables" and vowed to rid India of that plague, and Sabarmarti, from which he began his famous Salt March that, in essence, freed India; and Birla House in Delhi where Arun wept at the site of his grandfather's assassination.
In our many travels around the world to make documentaries we have seen an unmistakable emergence of Gandhian principles as people consciously evolve ways to survive and flourish in our changing world. Besides telling the story of his life we want to focus on Gandhi in the 21st. century. Today. Gandhi is as collective, seeking to transform each other, and their societies through love and nonviolent action. We will film examples of projects and communities, suggested by Arun Gandhi, that actualize his grandfather's ideas and philosophy. Gandhi's way begins in microcosm, in the individual heart and mind, in the smallest practice. Then, like a grain of wheat it expands to household, village, the world and all of creation.
Throughout his life he experimented with model villages that would thrive on the ideals of ahimsa, and economic, gender and caste equality. He understood that the self-sustaining local community was a key to freedom from poverty and domination by outside economic forces. We are particularly interested in sustainable agriculture and energy, education, the empowerment of women, interfaith harmony and health services for the poor.
Finally, Gandhi is evoked as an ideal of human potential throughout the world, but many do not know the deep roots of his spiritual activism. In this, our second film in India, we want to provide an overview of the ancient wisdom of India from which he primarily drew his philosophy. Our visuals will be the great temples, and the followers of the great religions of India. As always, we will choose among the best scholars to describe these influences on Gandhi and the world.
We want the audiences for A Time For Great Souls to come away with a profound understanding of Mahatma Gandhi and know that they too, in giving from their own lives and their true hearts to alleviate suffering and make a better world, have within them A Great Soul.
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