A 21st 100 years Journey into the heart of darkness "…It's Hell on Earth" a headline within the Seattle Times view this morning, quoting a U.N. worker on the ground in Haiti subsequent to the catastrophic 7.0 quake final Monday, which laid waste to the poorest place within the world. Equally apocalyptic headlines plaster every primary news source from print to the net this morning: "…It's the darkest day for Port-au-Prince," spoke about Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive in another article. One hundred thousand are presumed dead, as the count mounts body-by-body piled in mass graves by the literal truck-loads, while crude hospitals are set up in college yards. The wounded are lined up on make-shift beds of cardboard and blue tarp as two-by-fours splint broken limbs and I.V.'s dangle from tree branches like bird feeders. Survivors desperate for drinking h2o rip pipes from walls to siphon what little moisture remains in their galvanized veins. The headlines and images coming out of Haiti this week view like Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" and not Sunday morning news, as I sift through the heartbreaking headlines and sip my warm Starbucks decaf Americano with cream.Dance With Destiny is a feature-length documentary film by Bruce Weaver, due to be released later this year. Though the images from Haiti are devastating, they can be not surprising to Weaver. His passionate, if not painful first film is a journey into the heart of darkness that Weaver contends is the inevitable outcome of a planet out of balance and perilously close to a spot of no return, regarding to the films' panel of expert witnesses. The film is most a personal journey of one man's radical like regarding the earth, of indigenous peoples, of all things wild and unindustrialized, and an uncomfortable wake-up-call all at once. The horror playing out in Haiti this week is but a shrill "…cymbal crashing amidst a return story of global events playing like two of Beethoven's turbulent symphonies," as Weaver has said: recent tsunamis in Indonesia, the levy break in New Orleans, the polar caps melting like ice fresh cream on a sweltering summer day into an ocean presently being Hoovered of 90% of its species----- the largest mass extinction since "The Best Dying," 241 million years ago, when 96% of all marine life went extinct, along with 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. Conditions in Sudan make Dante's Inferno view virgin venture insurance prophecy and the routine rape regarding the Earth's precious rainforest bio-diversity closely resemble a psychotic serial rapist who holds their victim captive, and returns over and over repeatedly to satisfy an insatiable desire for more. Though none of these events return like a surprise to Weaver, provided all he has studied on the topic of Earth-Changes, and his travels regarding the globe, the heartbreak he feels is palpable throughout his film."…This is a best drama unfolding in front of our eyes, and it's of mythic proportions." -Dr. Peter Todd From the time Bruce was eight years old he has had a recurring dream, filled with images of atomic plumes rising above the Earth, the barren landscape below stripped of lime and blue and life (save a little unenviable survivors scavenging for food and water) something like reruns of Soylent Lime on late-night T.V. Disturbing images for anyone, let alone a young boy who had no business dreaming such dreams, instead, free to be follow his exuberant curiosity, undisturbed, that lured him like the Pied Piper for hours into the woods behind his rural Missouri home where he should be located skipping stones and turning them too, to marvel at nature's endless supply of mysteries. The natural world held Bruce captive and not Warm Wheels or G.I. Joes as with other boys his age.
Later in life, Bruce took the path that many young men without means do, of joining the Space Force at the earliest likely age sequential to explore the earth beyond rural Missouri and begin his initiation into manhood. As fate should have it, he located himself outfitted in full chemical-warfare gear, done with gas mask, doing drills below the close of darkness, loading nuclear war-heads on F-4 nuclear fighter jets, and B-52 bombers. It was then that Bruce's apocalyptic dream images transformed into a terrifying reality: personally hand-holding hundreds of nuclear warheads, positioning them to execute their unholy mission as if loading UPS packages onto a truck for holiday deliveries. He repeatedly asked to be released from this duty and fulfill his commitment to his place in electronics or computer technologies. Finally, an accident that nearly severed a finger and his repeated requests to be repositioned landed him an early discharge, below "honorable conditions." This function at twenty years of age profoundly altered the course of his life, and led him to the realization that person beings are engaged in a very real dance with destiny, increasingly divorced from and out-of-step with what should be an ongoing and intimate relationship together with the natural world."…The only real danger that exists is person himself. He is the best danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We have knowledge of nothing of man, distant too little. His psyche should be studied, due to the fact that we are the origin of all coming evil." - Carl Jung Were it not for these disturbing yet formative images and experiences subsequently dark and straight-up gloomy they were Bruce shall not have return to like so deeply for the Earth, nor should he have traveled the earth to eventually meet remarkable men and women who share this similar to passion and love. Others like Dr. Peter Todd or Father Thomas Berry, similarly compelled to preserve nature, habitats, indigenous peoples and sacred traditions to right injustices where the locate them, and regard The Wisdom of Nature as sacred. These meetings with like-minded Earth-stewards became the seeds regarding the film compelling him to tell a modern-day story regarding the Earth in peril, and release a voice to these other best minds, each warning of our collective destiny should we fail to heed these multiple warning signs. "…We've already hit the iceberg. We are the proverbial frog within the pail on the stove (boiled to death subsequent to failing to jump out due to the fact that the heat rose only incrementally). We are the flood, we are the asteroid. We had better learn how to be the ark". -Thomas Friedman Chapter One in Dance with Destiny, is titled "Prophesy": prophetic stories of indigenous peoples the world-over, foretelling the events of this day with an unsettling montage of images that take us directly into the broken heart regarding the filmmaker, for humans' disregard of nature: disturbing, in a word, but whether you have knowledge of the stomach for it, press on. The 2nd chapter, "Face of Darkness" is no fewer uncomfortable, as it urges us to look at the mirrored reflection of our own darkness, a compulsory first step for real change. The intellect is implicated here, as the seed of mans contempt for nature, numbing our pain to the violence perpetrated against the Earth, in fact encouraging us to celebrate mans victories over nature. In Chapter Three: "Sleepwalking into the Apocalypse," as Father Thomas Berry says so humbly, "…We thought we were creating a wonder world for our children," when in fact what we have created for our babies and grandchildren is a future perilously close to nuclear war, wide-spread h2o and food shortages, unprecedented loss of bio-diversity, and a burden of toxic waste products we are deferring to future generations. Chapter 4 audaciously proclaims, "its Too Late," where we meet the Mamos or Kogi elders who issue to us, "Younger Brother" an urgent warning, "…make a payment and ready your soul." If we make our method through this dark passage that leads us to chapter five, "Gaia's Return," we shall sense there, the presence of a tiny flame flickering in us; a flame that protects all that is wild and natural and sacred, until we return to the sixth and final chapter titled, "Hokahey!" The journey is a heroes journey; one that brings us full-circle to our true obligation as person beings, to live passionately, with dignity and nobility on the Earth, in triumphant celebration of The Wisdom of Nature. Single-handedly crafted, Dance With Destiny defines "guerilla filmmaking." Bruce Weaver is filmmaker, sound-man and editor. His journey took 3 years, and with his camera on his back, he traveled the globe from the Sierra Nevada mountains of Columbia where he met the Kogi elders, then dotted a path to the Himalayas and on into Southern India where he met the "madmen" of Bengal, the Bauls, whose primitive earth-center spiritual practices fueled his work with The Sacred. The grandeur regarding the Canadian Rockies and the wisdom regarding the Native American traditions continued to inspire his work, leading him to post-Katrina New Orleans and Tennessee, where he met together with the late pioneer regarding the deep ecology movement, Father Thomas Berry, who at ninety-two, inspired the film with his wisdom and undying like regarding the earth, passing it like a torch to Bruce like a grandfather passes his legacy to the next generation. Like a conductor of a symphony, Bruce unifies each unique voice in one passionate cry for the future of our planet and our shared humanity. Within the true soul of independent filmmaking, Dance with Destiny is one man's heartfelt devotion and prayer for the Earth. Bruce Weaver is a 2002 scholarship winner and graduate regarding the prestigious Vancouver Film School, and director/filmmaker of many brief films on the subject of sustainability, permaculture, sacred traditions and Earth-centered practices. See his webpage to look special features an more about his film: Bruce maybe be contacted via filmmaker.dharma@gmail.com
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