Our feature documentary Tukdam: Between Worlds will have its World Premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh this Friday (July 8th), in the Pálás Cinema at 1:30pm.
Tickets are on sale via the Galway Film Fleadh Box Office.
Juxtaposing ground-breaking scientific research and Tibetan perspectives, this documentary challenges notions of life and death, and where we draw the line between them.
This is the first opportunity for audiences to get a glimpse into something that is completely new to Western ideas and audiences.
The director will be in attendance for a Q&A after the screening
SYNOPSIS
Most of us think of death as something clear-cut, and that medical science has it neatly figured out. This feature documentary explodes such assumptions through its exploration of a phenomenon that blurs life and death to an unprecedented degree. In what Tibetan Buddhists call tukdam, advanced meditators die in a consciously controlled manner. Though dead according to our biomedical standards, they often stay sitting upright in meditation; remarkably, their bodies remain fresh and lifelike, without signs of decay for days, sometimes weeks after clinical death. Following ground-breaking scientific research into tukdam and taking us into intimate death stories of Tibetan meditators, the film juxtaposes scientific and Tibetan perspectives as it tries to unravel the mystery of tukdam.
Crew
Writer / Director: Donagh Coleman
Producers: Martha O’Neill and Kaarle Aho
Co-Producers: Pille Rünk and Donagh Coleman
Editor: Mirjam Strugalla
Composer: Märt-Matis Lill
A Making Movies / Wildfire Films / Allfilm Production
Produced with the support of incentives for the Irish Film Industry provided by the Government of Ireland” in association with RTÉ and KRO -NCRV, with the participation of ARTE GEIE, YLE, Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Film, Institute, Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland and the Finnish Film Foundation