March-April 2000

The producers of Chasing Buddha, a documentary film about Ven. Robina Courtin, shown in January at the Sundance Film Festival, have offered it to the Milarepa Prison Project for Buddhist Practitioners (a project of Mandala) which she coordinates. “We are happy that the project use it in any way they wish to raise funds for their work,” said the film”s director and co-producer, Australian Amiel Courtin-Wilson, a nephew of Ven. Robina.

The film is scheduled for showing on SBS television in Australia this year, and will show at other film festivals in the US, Europe and Australia.

Having already won an award for his film work in Australia, Amiel was delighted that Chasing Buddha was accepted at Sundance. “Documentary work is generally swept under the carpet, so it was even more exciting to have Chasing Buddha placed in the World Cinema section along with other dramatic feature films,” said Amiel.

The film is an exploration of an aunt “who has always occupied a mythological position in the family landscape.”

Amiel and his cameraman Vincent Heimann traveled with Ven. Robina throughout the United States for three months in early 1998, and filmed her at Kentucky State Prison in Eddyville, interviewing some of the men, including several on death row.

Tags: movies, ven. robina courtin