Scared Sacred review by John William

Velcrow Ripper's documentary Scared Sacred examines the connection between us all, good and bad

Velcrow Ripper’s Scared Sacred explores the relation between suffering and the sacred. Wanting to know if “the stories of the survivors of the great tragedies of human history” had any message of hope in them, Ripper spent five years traveling the globe in search of those stories. To prepare himself, he would spend time in a religious facility (from mosques to monasteries) in each country before going out to explore it.
What he found, in those five years, were eloquent voices of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances doing their best to light candles against the darkness.
In Bhopal, India, where a Union Carbide pesticide factory accident killed at least 8,000 outright and has killed twice more since it happened in 1984, his documentary uncovers people who refuse to give up, people who say “There is possibility if there is compassion.”
In Cambodia, in the Killing Fields, he finds a young man who was forced to watch his parents be killed by the Khmer Rouge and was told to smile, or die, while doing so. Trained to plant landmines, he now spends his life searching them out to defuse them.
In Bosnia, in Sarajevo, he discovers an artist couple who lived right on Sniper’s Alley, who tell him that even in the continuous carnage they sought through their art to “exchange negative energy of the world into positive vibration of the human soul.”
In India, at the turn of the century, he hears the Dalai Lama say “The concept of war is based on the concept of ‘we’ and ‘they’” and that the first disarmament must be internal.
In Hiroshima, he finds a nuclear blast survivor who says “We need to know each other.”
Nearly overwhelmed by the pain and courage, Ripper goes into a meditation retreat and discovers that contrary to popular belief, meditation is not a retreat from reality, but a total immersion in it. Everything appears. Fear and compassion in equal measure.
He leaves the retreat to visit Afghanistan again, after foreign military has pushed back some of the worst people of the Taliban period. He meets a young woman in an underground movement which supports women in Afghanistan. She tells him her country is turned into a cemetery with “moving dead,” numbed by centuries of war. Pushing back the remaining darkness is the way her movement deals with the pain.
In New York City just after the World Trade Center attack, where he “quite literally” breathes in suffering, he shows us a Zen teacher who says a reason many people come to look at the ruins is not to gawk, but to “connect in their hearts with their vulnerability.”
In Israel, members of families from both the Jewish and Palestinian groups who lost children in that continuing carnage tell him “we paid the highest price possible” so “if we can talk, anyone can.”
Ripper himself concludes the film with the statement which sums up the underlying theme in the movie: “dread allows me to see each face as my own.” To make sure we do not lose sight of this, he says “We cannot lose the freedom to choose the way we respond to whatever comes our way.”
Mehboob Bi, Satinath Sarangi, Aki Ra, Amina and Nejadad Bejovic, the Dalai Lama, Kae Goh Ogura, Zoelya, Saher, Sensei Enkyo, Sarnar Jan, Rabbi David Zeller, Rami Elhanan, George and Najwa Sa’ada, Robi Damelin and Velcrow Ripper appear as themselves. Heroes all.
www.scaredsacred.org

USA Mideast policy

The Vancouver-based producers of a provocative, pull-no-punches documentary DVD unveiled their free-to-download work online (www.focced.com) September 11 at Dadabase.
FOCCED is the first in a series that explores the relationship between US foreign policy, domestic budget cuts which hurt the poor, lobbyists in Washington, DC and the electoral process in the USA.
“Fellow Americans ... we’ve been FOCCED,” says narrator Stan Goff, a 22-year-veteran of US Special Forces, former Green Beret, Ranger and member of Delta Force. “The finance, oil, chemical, credit, energy and defence industries on Wall Street have hijacked the electoral process and turned the federal government into a slot machine designed to do nothing but pay out jackpots.” Step by step, Goff and his guests explain the how and why of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and the so-called war on terror.
Three years in the making, FOCCED is two hours and 27 minutes. It is distributed by Thousand Miles Productions, a BC registered not-for-profit educational society, available through internet file sharing services such as Kazaa, Limewire, and Bit Torrent, with the goal of getting people to take an active hand in the political process. It is also available for purchase on DVD.

What the bleep do we know?

Opening October 8, What the Bleep Do We Know!? is an award-winning documentary that says science and spirituality are not different modes of thought, but in fact describe the same thing.
The film asks what reality is and how one can tell. It combines its intricate concepts around a fictional live-action narrative starring Academy Award-winner Marlee Matlin from Children of a Lesser God. It uses 14 top scientists and mystics to illustrate and make comprehensible the notions being offered up.
Filmmakers William Arntz, Betty Chasse and Mark Vincente did not heed the conventional wisdom in Hollywood when they made their documentary.
The scientists featured are physicists William Tiller, Amit Goswami, John Hagelin, Fred Alan Wolf and David Albert; physicians Stuart Mameroff, Jeffrey Satinover, Andrew Newberg and Daniel Monti; chiropractor Joseph Dispenza; biologist Candace Pert; mystics and scholars Ramtha and Miceal Ledwith.
www.whatthebleep.com