Velcrow Ripper (b. Gibsons, BC 1963, raised as a Baha'i) is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker who explores the intersection of the spiritual and political. (see his Wikipedia
bio-filmography).
Scared Sacred (feature doc, NFB 2006) takes viewers to many
of the places in the world that have experienced great suffering in
recent years including Bhopal, Hiroshima, Israel and Palestine. The film
portrays Ripper's own search for meaning, and communicates stories of
hope in spite of oppression. 105 m online at
http://www.nfb.ca/film/scared_sacred/
Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action
(2008) on spiritual activism, tells the stories of people who believe
“another world is possible". Interviews with Brad Will (indy video maker
shot by rightwing paramilitaries in Oaxaca 2006, the original
inspiration for the film), Daryl Hannah, Buddhists Thich Nhat Hanh, Noah
Levine, and Joanna Macy; Christians Michael Beckwith, civil rights
organizer John Lewis, apartheid opponent Desmond Tutu; gnostic Sera
Beak, tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill, environment justice organizer
Van Jones, black writer Alice Walker, Public Citizen and PIRG founder
Ralph Nader. Fierce Light was voted most popular Canadian film and the
recipient of a special mention in the nonfiction feature category at the
Vancouver International Film Festival.
Complete 152m online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmo0DuZ59VY
Occupy Love
(2013) is a feature doc about the Occupy movement and the failure of
civilization as we know it. What the film shows, triumphantly, is that the dominant system of power
is failing to provide us with health, happiness or meaning, but that
love can unite as much as greed can divide. With scenes
from the Egyptian Revolution, the Indignado uprising in Spain, Occupy
Wall Street in New York, Indigenous activists at the Alberta Tar Sands,
the climate justice movement, and beyond. Interviews Bill McKibben,
Naomi Klein, Roshi Joan Halifax, Drew Dellinger, Charles Eisenstein,
Jeremy Rifkin, bell hooks , Anthony Robledo, Pancho Ramos, Colin Beavan,
Kimia Ghomeshi, Judy Rebick, Hawaian elder Kumu Raylene Kawaiaee,
Reverend Billy. Now
on tour and online.
Excerpt from
2007 article on NFB CitizenShift by Velcrow Ripper about the second in his trilogy:
[Interviewing US civil rights veterans, I found] a fierce love, a love of unrelenting compassion, of unwavering
nonviolence. A love that faces the bigotry and hatred of the Klu Lux
Klan, of the police with their dogs trained on black dummies to attack
wildly at the sight of black skin, of the average white citizens of the
south who spit and taunted the protestors as they were beaten bloody
for simply trying to sit a lunch counter or ride a bus or cross a
bridge, and dared to see the divine spark within each and every one of
those human beings. That recognizes that behind their hatred, is hurt.
Behind their anger, their prejudice, is fear. Behind their violence,
behind that testosterone fueled male agression of the hooded Klansman,
is a sad little boy, who didn’t get enough love. The people of the
movement were fueled by faith, and though I’m not a christian, and like
many in this era of fundamentalism, have grown weary and wary of
christian rhetoric, I have developed a profound respect for the way
Christianity informed the movement. It was sheltered in the churches,
the one place they could safely meet free from interference in a
segregated land. Although one of the Churches we visited, the 16th St.
Baptist Church, was firebombed by the KKK, resulted in the deaths of
four young girls. This tragic act became one of the sparks that set
off the irrepressible fire of the movement. The power of Faith, and
Christ’s original teachings on justice, and peace, gave great strength
to the people as they surged forward in the face of out and out assault.
Reverend Calvin Woods, one of the ‘footsoldiers’ of the movement,
told me that non-violence was not just a tactic of the movement, it was a
lived truth. They worked to not only stop themselves from striking
back at the enemy, but learned to remove even the desire to strike back
from their hearts. Rev. Mel White, who founded the movement ‘Soul
Force’, talks of the love that Martin Luther King calls “Agape” and
Gandhi called “Ahimsa.” It is a deep, great love that embraces all
beings, sees all as a reflection of the divine, and that is profoundly
non-violent. Non-violent not just in deed, but in thought. Speech
itself can be violent. Ask yourself before you speak or write a
violent phrase - is this love speaking? Are you a force of positivity
in the world, or a force of negativity? Are you promoting biophilia,
the love of life, or necrophilia, the love of death, the cyncism and
hatred that is at the root of the destruction of this planet? Do you
think you can create peace in the world through hatred? As Martin
Luther King said, hatred does not create love, only love can do that.
Darkness cannot create light, only light can do that. ?Although there
are a number of severe limitations to the popular book and documentary
“The Secret” (in particular the fact that is very ego based and stuff
based), there is a fundamental truth to this fact: your thoughts and
words draw to you the energy you put out. How do you want to live your
life?
More about Ripper and his other films: velcrowripper.co
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