Director Khashyar Darvich to Attend Local Premiere of Two Dalai Lama Documentaries

Khashyar Darvich, the producer-director of two new Dalai Lama documentary films (one of which is narrated by actor Harrison Ford) that are having their local red carpet film premiere at 6:45 p.m. on Monday, May 11, at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, spent a long time working on the movies. Fifteen years to be exact.


For Dalai Lama Awakening,10 cinematographers shot over 500 hours of video footage. The film features interviews with intellectual types such as Dr. Michael Beckwith (from The Secret), quantum physicists Fred Alan Wolf and Amit Goswami (from What the Bleep Do We Know), radio host and author Thom Hartmann, author Vicki Robin and revolutionary social scientist Jean Houston. The screening at the Cinematheque represents the very first Cleveland screenings of the two movies.

The films are currently on a 100-city U.S.-Canada Tour., and Darvich, who’ll be in attendance, recently returned from a 36-city film tour of England, Scotland and Ireland. Though he currently calls Los Angeles and Washington D.C. home, he has Northeast Ohio roots. “I am very proud to have been raised in Oxford, Ohio,” he says in an email he sent us, “and attended and graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College near Cleveland. Growing up in Ohio profoundly influenced me as an artist and filmmaker. As I have traveled around the world and shared my films with audiences in many countries, I feel like I take the part of my Ohio upbringing that is friendly, open-hearted and curious about other people and places." For tickets and information, visit DalaiLamaFilm.com/events or cia.edu/cinematheque/film-schedule/2015/05/dalai-lama-awakeningcompassion-in-action.