Daughters of Wisdom

Description

Audience Award Brooklyn International Film Festival
Outstanding Editing Brooklyn International Film Festival
Special Jury Prize Trento Film Festival

Official Selection
Vancouver International Film Festival
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Mill Valley Film Festival

Beautiful, important, poignant. – Filmmaker Magazine

A highly engaging and beautifully shot documentary. – Signs Journal of Women and Culture in Society

“Mesmerizing – A magical experience.” – Seattle Times

Synopsis

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 OF WISDOM is a story of these people, an experiential and transporting view of contemporary Tibet seen through the eyes of some of 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.

Director

Bari Pearlman

Bari Pearlman is a Manhattan-based independent producer, director, and writer. In addition to producing and directing Daughters of Wisdom, she is currently creating A Period Piece, about women’s relationships to menstruation, and is producing a feature documentary about the 70s singing troupe Up With People. She was Co-Producer/Co-Director (together with Phyllis Heller) of Mah-Jongg: The Tiles That Bind about the Jewish- and Asian-American women who play the centuries-old Chinese game, Producer of Derek Cianfrance’s Shots in the Dark, a documentary about crime scene photography for Court TV and Channel Four Britain, and Producer of VH1 Fan Club: ABBA Executive Produced by Joe Berlinger and directed by Bruce Sinofsky, and Segment Producer of Jonathan Judge’s Food for Thought: Good Taste In Art about a group of artists who create edible art.
As an Event Producer, Bari has created high-profile special events for Delta Air Lines, The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, The NYU Downtown Hospital Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She served as the Coordinator of the 1999 Classically Independent Film Festival Tour, Managing Director of the 1999 IFP American Independents in Berlin Program, Hospitality Director of the 1996 and 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival, Managing Director of the 1997 New York Women’s Film Festival, and the Curator/Programmer of the 1997 Moonworks Short Film Program. She is a Contributing Editor to Filmmaker Magazine, and has also translated the fiction of Swedish author Jonas Gardell. A 1987 graduate of SUNY Binghamton, Bari earned a Master’s degree in Literature from Indiana University in 1994.