Samsara

Samsara is Ron Fricke's sequel to Baraka. We can only assume that the style of Samsara will share something with Baraka.

Samsara is currently in production. Expect it to be released in 2006.

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Ron Fricke's description of Samsara

Dear friends

On the following pages you will find my proposal for "Samsara". It is difficult to express the degree of enthusiasm that I feel for this project. Photographed in 70mm, in many different countries, "Samsara" will be a celebration of world unity, a theme that is exceptionally timely as we approach the year 2000. "Samsara" will be a unique two hour experience and should be presented as a film event. As such, it has potential to play once a night or once a week for years rather than for a brief season. My last film "Baraka", was launch pad for "Samsara", which will delve deeper into my favorite theme: humanity's relationship to the eternal.

Sincerely, Ron Fricke

"Samsara"

Samsara is a Tibetan word that means "Wheel of Life", a concept both intimate and vast, obvious and oblique. It is the perfect subject for Ron Fricke, a filmmaker who has awed us time and again with exquisite images of the mundane. a filmmaker with an uncanny ability to reveal the elusive current of interconnection that runs through our Universe and our lives.

"Samsara" will be a "Fantasia" of the 1990's, a two hour odyssey that will transform viewers as they are swept along on a journey of the soul. Expanding on the blueprint laid out in "Baraka" (1992), "Samsara" will further explore the themes of interconnection and transcendence with a focus on cycles. Neither a documentary, nor a travelogue, "Samsara" will take the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation. Four ancestor spirits will accompany us as we follow several families from different cultures through the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. We will se clearly how this cycle mirrors the rhythm of the planet and links us to the rest of the nature.

Fricke firmly believes that nonverbal films must live up to the standard of great still photography which reveals the essence of a subject - not just the physical presence, but the inner workings as well. In order to accomplish this goal, he relies on the careful balance of three elements: cinematography, editing and music. Fricke will film "Samsara" in 20 - 30 different countries in the (65mm) 70mm format using a camera designed specifically for this project. Improving on the camera that he designed and built for "Baraka", Fricke's new motion control time-lapse camera will allow him to shift perspectives to reveal extraordinary view of ordinary scenes. He will film as if painting, with a camera that allows him to layer in images. The score for "Samsara" will encompass everything from classical to ethnic music. It will concentrate on vocals and natural sounds.

After the fantastic response to "Baraka", Fricke is confident that audiences are ready for films with a life affirming message. To him, filmmaking has always been more than a technical exercise. "When I create films, I look at the theatre as a temple. The audience sits in the dark with their senses alert and their defenses down. It is a perfect opportunity to bypass the viewer's personality and address their inner being".
Ron Fricke's outline for Samsara

1. PROLOGUE: CREATION. This section opens in ambiguous space. The perspective shrinks and expands unpredictably. We see atoms, molecules, cells, amoebas, volcanos, fire, wind etc. Many of these images are in time-lapse sequences. Out of the dark, we perceive gigantic particles falling in slow motion. As the camera moves back, we realize that they are granules of sand. The camera continues to retreat, revealing a pair of delicate fingertips and then a hand releasing the sand a few particles at a time. We find ourselves looking down on the figure of a monk who is putting the finishing touches on a sand painting mandala. As the camera descends toward the mandala, the sand begins to smear out from the center and blown away. The camera goes through the opening as if stepping through the door. We emerge in the interior of a Kiva with a shaft of light rotating slowly as the sun moves. With each revolution, the light reveals an ancestor spirit of a different "tribe"; one Native American, one Asian, one African and one European. These guides reappear throughout the film.

2. ACT 1: SPIRIT TAKING FORM. The spirit or energy behind the camera is seeking form. It journeys through underwater kelp forests, caves, narrow canyons, night skies. There is a sense that we are moving toward something but we don't know what. At the end of this sequence spirit bursts suddenly into form as we allow a baby into the world, preferably an underwater birth. The infant floats weightlessly through the water like a voyager in outer space.

3. ACT 2: MATTER, ONE TURN OF THE WHEEL. From an intimate view of one soul, we expand to encompass humanity. The theme music erupts in a joyous chorus of voices as we see babies being born under all circumstances from high-tech to no-tech, all over the world. There are healthy babies, premies, still births. We follow the cycle of life from birth to death focusing on four people, modern representatives of ancestor spirits, and experiences the diversity of their rituals and routines. Many of these shots are 24 frame and slow motion. At the end of the life cycle we see people of all ages nearing death from many different causes. We follow the last moments of an AIDS patient and the camera spirals up from his dead body like a spirit taking leave from the flesh.

4. ACT 3: SAMSARA, THE WHEEL OF LIFE. We are on the journey of the Spirit after death. The emphasis here is on the impermanence of the material world. We see abandoned landscapes. decaying remnants of the technology of death, such as the skeleton of a WWII bomber under the sea, and archaeological ruins. The absurdity of humankind's quest to accumulate possessions and power becomes obvious. Spirit must confront the consequences of its pass through human life and comes to terms with it. There are time-lapse double passes of night to day and day to night that create a sense of the world spinning continually through space. At the end, the cycles accelerate until they appear to be still. We sense the return of the presence (Spirit) from Act 1.

5. EPILOGUE: REBIRTH. The theme music from Act 2 resurfaces. The film returns to organic imagery as spirit music retunes to matter in manifold forms: plants, animals and human. Finally, we are sucked back through the opening in the mandala, which reassembles, sealing the door behind us.

www.spiritofbaraka.com/samsara.aspx