Film Festivals: Shift Your World (ending)

The first edition of Shift Your World Film Festival happened last weekend. It was organized by one of the many spiritual platforms online: The Shift Network.

One of the films shown during the festival was “Heal’ about the power of our beliefs. We are living stressful lives and that has an impact on our health. It makes us take more and more pills that do not solve the source of the problem and also have side effects. So then we need to take even more pills and the only winner in this vicious cycle is pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile all we really have to do is to take care of ourselves and let our body heal. Some people did it but we do not hear about them enough. This film shows us what is possible.

There is more and more information about the ability of our bodies to heal but mostly online. Mainstream media are not interested in this phenomenon or show it as anomalies and call it pseudo-science. It is not in their interest to popularize this knowledge. But as this film shows, there are many examples of people who healed themselves from almost any possible disease. So if they could do it, why can’t you? All you have to do is work on yourself. And treat your body as a whole instead of a machine with replaceable parts. We all have power to heal.

The last film shown during the festival was ‘Baraka’ by Ron Fricke — the first feature film recipient of the Culture Shift Legacy Award, ‘honoring films that have achieved legendary status in advancing humanity’s evolutionary conversation’. This cult film comments on our human condition without a word. There are no dialogues, just images of life on this planet accompanied by music. Time lapses, slow motion shots and juxtapositions create unique, trance-like atmosphere which helps us reach a state of peculiar meditation.

‘Baraka was filmed on six continents — in Africa, both Americas, Asia, Australia and in Europe. We travel to Argentina, Australia, Brasil, Cambodia, China, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Nepal, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey and USA. All in an hour and a half! We see different people following various religions but soon we also start to perceive the similarities.

Encouraged by the success of the film Ron Fricke 19 years later made the second part — ‘Samsara’. But it all began almost 4 decades ago with the Qatsi trilogy by Geodfrey Reggio: ‘Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance’, ‘Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation’ and ‘Naqoyqatsi: Life as War’. Ron Fricke was cinematographer and collaborator on the first film and then improved the photographic techniques and even built a special camera to film his own take on the subject using the 70 mm film reel. If you enjoy these films, you should also watch the Qatsi trilogy.

So, in spite of the feeling of helplessness caused by the dystopian images of the future popularized by mainstream media, we should concentrate on the protopian reality.

‘Heal’ and “Baraka”.

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