BARAKA : INTRODUCTION TO OUR WORLD WISDOM TRADITIONS
Baraka is a 70mm cinematic masterpiece, a sensory journey through 6 continents, 24 countries. Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which can be translated as "a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds." The visual feast includes Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, Whirling Dervishes, a solar eclipse, Buddhist monks, African tribal rituals, Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, rain forests, Ayers Rock, Big Sur country, Hawaiian volcanoes, Brazilian slums, time-lapse footage of car and pedestrian traffic, post-Persian Gulf War shots of Kuwait's burning oil fields, burning-of-the-dead ceremonies on the Ganges, refuse dumps of Calcutta, Auschwitz, Egyptian Pyramids, Angkor Wat, Mount Everest, Tuol Sleng in Cambodia, Indonesian factory workers. . . Directed and filmed by Ron Fricke.
Visit the Spirit of Baraka website: http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/
Review: http://cours.cegep-st-jerome.qc.ca/511-411-p.l/baraka.htm
1) Baraka means "Breath" in Persian Sufi (Islam). Why do you think the film is titled Baraka, "breath", "essence ?"
2)Is the planetary perspective of the film expressing a critique of the modern world? Is there an alternative vision represented?
3)What messages do you get from the film "Baraka"?
4) Discuss how the absence of text affected the goal of a global perspective in Baraka .
5) How might film & this film in particular transform our visions of spirituality, the sacred, religion, & our planet?
6) Consider the imagery of movement in the beginning and end of the film, and relate that to the condition of people and culture (especially clear are the images at the Ganges River in India ). The transitory nature of our human lives...accelerated time lapses show that we are streaks of light, blurred in the passing of time, and as impermanent as anything else on the planet, yet comparable to the comets, the stars, the infinity of life around our earth. What do you make of this impermanence, a theme we will explore this semester?
7) How might film make the sacred known to us in new ways? Consider Baraka as a Contemporary Visual Scripture, a sacred text using a current textual genre: film?
8) What images do you see applied to culture and the city, and how did those relate or contrast to nature?
9) What are some possible interpretations of the monk on the street following the images of the cigarette factory and the city streets?
10) What kind of social statement does the film Baraka make with the people on the refuse heap and the images of the poor?
11)What transitions stand out for you? Explain.
12) Why did we watch Baraka ? Could this vision arise without seeing a film like this? How? Does it make you want to travel?