What makes it different from others?

Best movie ever!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I saw this film at the Waterfront Film Festival, and found it quite disappointing. Ostensibly, the film was an attempt to link spirituality and activism. Sadly, the spirituality in the film amounted to little more than the hollow postmodern rejection of any structured belief system and vague embrace of "tolerance". In a similarly disappointing vein, the activism envisioned by the filmmakers was nothing more than generally pointless (and often very vague) political protest. It was somewhat fitting with the hopeless, oblivious idealism of the film as a whole that it ended with a group chanting "We are here and we are not leaving" ... on the anniversary of having left the south central LA garden a year earlier.Overall, the film came across as an attempt to seem deep to the more simple-minded viewers, but could fairly easily be recognized as hollow by everyone else.

Dedicated to his friend Brad Will who was killed while filming protests against the State repression of a teacher's strike in Oaxaca, Mexico, Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper's Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action is a celebration of those willing to take action in support of their spiritual beliefs. The film is the second installment of a trilogy on spiritual activism of which the 2004 award winning film Scared Sacred was the first. As to the motivation for the film, Fierce Light, Ripper says, "I began to look around and realize that my spirituality and my activism had been so separated, it was almost a schizophrenia in my life, so I felt the need to bring that together." After the opening segment in Oaxaca when Brad is tragically killed and Ripper's life is endangered by State Police, the film explores Mahatma Gandhi's "soul force" and Martin Luther King's "love in action" as the guiding force behind the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. The film shows the walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery and the violence and tear gas the marchers encountered along the way.Civil rights activist, now congressman, John Lewis, says even after being beaten and left for dead on the Bloody Sunday March of 1965 in Selma Alabama, hatred and violence were never an option. Lewis recalls Martin Luther King saying to him, "we just gotta love the hell out of them." Ripper talks about the civil rights struggle in these terms, "What struck me most was that this was movement rooted solidly in love. Not the hallmark love that we have come identify with the word, but a fierce love, a love of unrelenting compassion, of unwavering nonviolence." Ripper's camera also takes us to India to visit the Dalit community formerly known as "untouchables", to Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, to the farmers in South Central Los Angeles and the protesters like actress Daryl Hannah and tree sitter Julia Butterfly Hill who sat in trees and marched and sang to defend the farmers right to grow their crops on a piece of land slated for development, and to visit with Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn as he leads the movement for reconciliation in Vietnam. There is also a segment on Buddhist teacher, author and counselor Noah Levine whose book "Dharma Punx" describes his awakening to compassion after a youth spent with drugs and violence.Ripper interviews spiritual activist and author Gloria Jean Watkins known as bell hooks and has this to say about the meeting, "Fierce Light for her is awareness, fierce compassion, fierce love, opening to that which is, fully. The sacred is to be found in every moment, not in an isolated context, not in some distant enlightenment. It is in the flash of a red cardinal across the sky, in the new blooms of a lily in her garden." The focal point of the film, however, is the struggle by the South Central Farmers of Los Angeles to protect their 14-acre community farm in an industrial area in south Los Angeles from developers. In that farm, 300 families, mostly Latino, grew more than 100 varieties of fresh food and healing herbs for their community from 1994 until 2006.Ripper shows the protests of singers Joan Baez and Willie Nelson, Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Danny Glover, and Daryl Hannah, and politicians such as Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich against the order to vacate the land and the tears that flowed freely when the bulldozers came. While showing examples of people who put their bodies on the line for a cause, the director makes it clear there is not a single standard for activism. "When I talk about activism in the film and spirituality in the film", he says, "it doesn't have to be in any way, shape, or form the more visible forms of activism. It can be just the way we live our lives, how we relate to people, coming from a place of compassion." Fierce Light can become a bit cloying at times but it has a cumulative power that makes real the possibilities for our planet. While there will always be risk involved in taking action for one's beliefs, in the words of Anais Nin, "And the time came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." That time is now.

This film takes the viewer on a journey through different activist initiatives in order to explore the "new" coupling of spirituality and activism. Ripper has some really good footage and some great interviews... however the film is lacking focus. The idea of spiritual activism is stressed throughout the film, as if it is some new phenomenon. Ripper explains spiritual activism as working toward some greater good or change... well isn't that what activism has always worked towards? Ripper also stresses the importance of passive resistance, but then goes on to explain activists as warriors. Doesn't this defeat the point of showing passive resistance as the epitome of spiritual activism? There is also the issue of Ripper himself. His presence in the film seems unnecessary and detracts from the message of the film. Is it about him or is it about activism? Not to mention his voice is monotonous and slightly annoying.Although Ripper has some great footage, he uses too much of it. In this case less is more. The film looks at the civil rights movement, the "garden" in LA, the riots in Montreal in 2001, Vietnam, etc. It's just too much and distracts the viewer from what Ripper is getting at... which is a little foggy to begin with.What is spiritual activism? Why do we care? Why should we care? Ripper doesn't entice the audience to make a change... he is preaching to the choir. The only people who would probably pay to go see this movie are those who are already informed. So what is the audience coming away with at the end? The reconfirmed knowledge that activism is important and that Daryl Hannah sat in a tree for a month. OK maybe that's a little harsh, but we all know what activism is and what it entails. Ripper should have focused on passive resistance as activism by looking at the issue of the garden more in depth- who are these people, what is their story, why do they need this garden, why are they so passionate about it? All in all the film was disappointing.

I was fortunate to have seen this film at the Palm Springs Film Festival in January 2009. This brilliant film was worth the entire festival. The audience cheered and applauded. It is a must see for any human being who asks . . . "What can I do to make a difference? I was moved to tears of compassion and inspired to take action. Run to see this movie and tell all your friends. Gather in groups to watch the film and remember why you are here. I was filled grace and reconnected to what love in action truly is. Our light is much stronger than any darkness and our determinationto do what is right will always prevail!Yes this remarkable film is a Human Sunrise.