Iyengar: The Man, Yoga, and the Student's Journey

Demand.Film Canada is bringing another awesome yoga movie to our city!

Tuesday, May 28, 7pm at Cineplex Odeon South Edmonton Cinema, come see a screening of Iyengar: The Man, Yoga, and the Student's Journey

The way Demand.Film works, the show only screens if enough tickets are sold so please reserve your tickets well ahead of time so that we can all enjoy this experience together.  

See you there!

**IMPORTANT UPDATE**
Andrew and the other kind folks at Demand.Film have created a special coupon code that gets us 10% off the ticket price! 

It can be used individually, so we can each purchase our own tickets. 

Please use coupon code "Tara10" to get the discount!

April 22, 2015 is Earth Day!

Saleem communing with Mother Earth

I'm excited to spend Earth Day outside and so is Saleem!

There are also plenty of local events to participate in:

Strathcona County is hosting a free screening of the movie "Just Eat It" and an information session about how organic waste is handled in the county on April 22nd.

The City of Edmonton, and Earth's General Store are hosting all kinds of events on the weekend, April 26 and 27th.  I hear my favorite vegan food truck Sailin' On is going to be there!

Online, you can visit the David Suzuki Foundation and enter contests to win prizes from the Queen of Green and IKEA Canada.

Even Value Village is getting on board, offering double stamps for discounts in-store when you donate your pre-loved goods on Wednesday, April 22nd.

How will you be spending Earth Day?

Wanna Go See a Movie?

Weather-wise, during March in Alberta anything can happen!

One day you are basking in the sunshine, snow melting merrily off the roof, and the next you're shivering, wondering how much longer 'til spring?!?  Sigh...

If you need something to do on one of those days, or if you're just excited to be able to get out of the house again, consider checking out one of these movies:

The Canadian premier of Gurukulam is playing at the Metro, March 29, 2015.  To celebrate, the event will also feature live music before the movie, and snacks and dialogue with the filmmakers and Andrew Gow, the director of the University of Alberta's Religious Studies Program afterwards.

The Metro also plays a ton of retro, foreign and independent films.  Check them out!

Christian Marclay's "The Clock" is playing at the Art Gallery of Alberta until April 12, 2015.  

I saw several hours of "The Clock" when it played in Toronto, and let me tell you, it is not your typical movie experience!  The exhibit features couch seating for your viewing comfort, but no snacks are permitted. (It is a gallery after all, and this, my friends, is art!)  

I know it seems weird to watch hours and hours of movie clips of clocks, but trust me, this is anything but boring!  Actually, I found it to be a riveting meditation on time, and a fun pop-culture puzzle.  I can't wait to see it again!  Super hard-core viewers, you can catch the last 24-hour screening on April 11.

And in case you didn't know, Cinema City Movies 12 plays Bollywood movies on a regular basis!

The Three Deadliest Words in the World: It's a Girl

October 11th is the United Nations International Day of the Girl Child. 

In honor of girls everywhere, the Indo-Canadian Women's Association in Edmonton is hosting a screening of the film It's a Girl 7 pm at the University of Alberta.

"In India, China and many other parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. The United Nations estimates as many as 200 million girls are missing in the world today because of this so-called “gendercide”.

Girls who survive infancy are often subject to neglect, and many grow up to face extreme violence and even death at the hands of their own husbands or other family members."

Watch the trailer here.

Sattvic Movie Saturday: Tibetan Book of the Dead - The Great Liberation Through Hearing

My Bodhi Seed Mala and the Bardo Thodol

It's Saturday again!  Time for another sattvic movie offering! 

This one from the National Film Board of Canada is as much a teaching as it is a documentary. 

It is the story of a young monk's first experience visiting the home of a dying man to assist his teacher in easing the pain of passing for the man and his family. 

My most vivid memory of this film is watching it in a small, makeshift theatre in Dharamsala, India filled with sweaty travellers and gentle monks. 

How wonderful and otherworldly it was to crowd around a television set on thin matresses and cushions on the floor to listen to the voice of Leonard Cohen narrating these ancient and timeless teachings.

The next time I saw it was with my peers in a Literary Tibetan class at the University of Alberta.  We had memorized the entire Tibetan alphabet in 48 hours and spent the rest of the course transliterating and translating lines from this text, the Bardo Thodol. 

The images in the film and the stories our professor (a wonderful German woman in her last year of teaching) told us about life with her Tibetan husband have blurred in my mind. 

Watching this now, I am flooded with memories from the bardo of my own existence and a new sense of urgency to wake up!

Click here to watch full screen on YouTube.

"Anything that has a shape will crumble away. Anything in a flock will disband. We are all like bees, alone in this world, buzzing and searching with no place to rest. So we offer this prayer: Delusions are as various as the reflections of the moon on a rippling sea. Beings become so easily caught in a net of confused pain.

May I develop compassion as boundless as the sky, so that all may rest in the clear light of their awareness."