Identity and Spirituality (Ages 15-17)
Adolescence is the time when we start questioning who we are and what we believe. This playlist contains films that illustrate these themes in different cultures.
Pour visionner cette sélection en français, cliquez ici.
Films in This Playlist Include
In Full Voice
The Trap
Tulku
Tales of Sand and Snow
Cosmic Current
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In Full Voice2021|52 minMuslim women are disconcerting, intriguing, polarizing—and straitjacketed by conflations of ideas in front-page stories. While the media tend to portray them as submissive and silenced, filmmaker Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski has chosen to distance herself from that caricature, with which she does not identify. She sat down with six Muslim Canadian women eager to talk about what shapes their identities. The resulting documentary, In Full Voice, offers an intimate perspective on the journey of these women, who have a common desire to share their visions of Islam.
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The Trap2007|19 minThis short documentary examines the unlikely interactions between French-speaking fishermen and Buddhist monks and nuns in a Cape Breton village. Seemingly divided by language, culture and religion, these people share more than meets the eye. The film delicately weaves a connection between the beliefs of the 2 groups, who both regard life as a cycle. In French with English subtitles.
This documentary was made as part of the Tremplin program, with the collaboration of Radio-Canada. -
TulkuGesar Mukpo was three when he became one of the first people born in the West to be recognized as a tulku the present-day reincarnation of a Buddhist master. For his entire life, he's been trying to figure out what that really means. Starting in the mid-1970s, Tibetan teachers including Gesar's father, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche; began recognizing Western children as tulkus. Suddenly, a system that had ensured stable spiritual power and authority in Tibetan society for 800 years was transplanted into a completely different culture. In this intensely personal documentary, Gesar sets out to meet other tulkus to find out how they reconcile modern and ancient, East and West. Journeying through Canada, the United States, India and Nepal, he encounters four other tulkus who struggle with the meaning of this profound dilemma. What does it mean to carry on this ancient tradition designed for an old world when you're living in a completely new one? How will Gesar and other Western tulkus fulfill their destiny? Tulku was produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld.
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Tales of Sand and Snow2004|48 minIn a quest to rediscover the spiritual values of his own people, an African filmmaker from the Gourmantche tribe of Burkina Faso visits the Atikamekw of Northern Quebec. The resulting documentary is a dialogue between those who divine the future in the sand with those who use snow-encased sweat lodges to reconnect with the spiritual world.
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Cosmic CurrentAn intimate and personal documentary of a family who, brought together by illness, embark on a a modern-day spiritual pilgrimage to India. When Indo-Canadian filmmaker Anand Ramayya, his traditional Hindu mother, Jaya, his psychologist/filmmaker father, Ray, and his Japanese rock star brother, Raj are brought together, from Saskatchewan and Japan to the south of India, what unfolds is an intimate and entertaining portrait of a family trying to reconnect. A mix of first-person diary-cam, lively interviews, and on-the-fly footage put a fresh spin on universal questions of ethnicity, home and self. Their vivid and revelation-filled journey takes them to Tirupati, an ancient site of Hindu worship in India. They've come at the request of Jaya, to pray for her health. It is the first time the family has been together in India for 25 years, and the road is filled with surprises.
Cosmic Current was produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld.