An intimate portrait of the nuns of Kala Rongo, a rare and exceptional Buddhist Monastery exclusively for women in remote northeastern Tibet.
In Tibet today, roughly 15% of the people live in urban centers, where the ongoing struggle for Tibet's future is taking place. But the other 85% of Tibetans live in rural areas, subsistence farmers and nomadic herding families engaged in the daily struggle to eat and survive.
DAUGHTERS OFWISDOM is a story of these people, an experiential and transporting view of contemporary Tibet seen through the eyes of some if its most extraordinary women, the nuns of Kala Rongo Monastery of Nangchen, Kham.
Founded in 1990, the Kala Rongo Monastery is granting women choices they've never had before, and changing outmoded attitudes that no longer serve the greater good of the community. Through the pragmatic vision of their benefactor, Lama Norlha Rinpoche, nearly 300 nuns are now receiving religious and educational training previously unavailable to them.
They are being given a real opportunity to change the course of their lives, and to preserve the rich spiritual heritage of their people, even as they slowly reshape it.
Some shy, some outspoken, all committed to the often difficult life they have chosen, the nuns graciously allow the camera into their vibrant spiritual community and offer us insight into their exemplary lives.
68 minutes. Audience Award Best Documentary Brooklyn International Film Festival 2007, Official Selection Atlantic Film Festival 2007.
Produced and Directed by Bari Pearlman www.daughtersofwisdom.com