A Spiritual Collaboration between East & West - A WORK IN PROGRESS

From the Producers of BLESSINGS: The Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns of Tibet

“When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.”

~ 8th century - Guru Padmasambhava

In 1959, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama escapes the Chinese invasion of Tibet and with his departure and the exodus of many of the major teachers of all the sects of Tibetan Buddhism— Buddhadharma, as it was practiced in virtual seclusion for centuries in the Land of Snow, was suddenly thrust out into the world.

"The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the Twentieth Century."

~ Arnold Toynbee, Historian

Fifty years later, there are Tibetan Buddhist meditation centers in every major city in the western world, two three-year retreat centers in France alone, and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, has 92,000 followers on Twitter.

When the Iron Bird Flies traces the astounding path of one of the world’s great spiritual traditions from the caves of Tibet to the mainstream of western culture and asks: how can this 2,600 year old eastern religion help us in the West cope with our 21st century lives… and reach Enlightenment?

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion….Buddhism answers this description....If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."

~ Albert Einstein

Chariot Productions and Pundarika Foundation, the producers of BLESSINGS: The Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns of Tibet, have teamed up again to tackle this timely and important subject.

The focus of our exploration will be the evolution of the relationship between Tibetan Buddhist teachers and western Buddhist practitioners and the ongoing spiritual collaboration between East and West that is shaping the establishment of a genuine western Tibetan Dharma.

"Buddhism has transformed every culture it has entered, and Buddhism has been transformed by its entry into that culture."

~ Arnold Toynbee

Filming of When the Iron Bird Flies began in the spring of 2009 at retreats in England and Crestone, Colorado, at the Mind & Life Conference in Dharamsala, and at the Guna Institute in Bir, India. Director Victress Hitchcock (BLESSINGS), with cameraman Pablo Bryant (TULKU: Divine Birth, Ordinary Life) and associate producer and soundperson Amber Bemak (BLESSINGS) have conducted interviews with longtime Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, translators and teachers including, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche, Matthieu Ricard, Dr. Richard Davison, Alan Wallace, Gerardo Abbou, Marcia Binder Schmidt, Richard Gere, and Eric Swanson.

We are now scheduling the remaining interviews and scenes to be filmed between now and November, 2010 in California, New York, Nova Scotia and again in Dharamsala. Jeffery Paine, author of “Re-enchantment – Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West”, has joined our team as script consultant.

We are presently seeking the funding to complete the production by December, 2011. The project is budgeted at $250,000 which will cover the costs of production and post-production, including additional filming in the US, Europe and Nepal, archival research and acquisition of footage, scriptwriting, editing, music composition, sound mixing and online editing.

A 15 minute selected scenes edit can be viewed on Vimeo at www.vimeo.com/7944296.

For more information on the project, contact Victress Hitchcock at victress@chariotvideos.com or at 719 256-5602.

Click here to view a trailer of When the Iron Bird Flies.

Click here to see a 15 minute selected scenes edit at vimeo.com.