GLOBAL DIVERSITY FILM PROJECTDocumenting the interconnectedness of all life,
Bridging worldviews and varying modes of perception.
The Global Diversity Film Project documents the myriad modes of perception in cultures worldwide, both traditional and innovative. We learn from indigenous peoples and cutting edge thinkers and doers utilizing ideas at the ever-shifting borders between science and spirituality.
Through creative visual media, we seek understanding, compassion, connection, and integration between ideas and varied lifeways that may appear to be in conflict or even opposition. We explore possibilities for bridging worlds based on varying perceptions, whether they be human-to-human, human-animal interspecies communication, or human to ecosystem relationships.
Project Director Debra Denker has been making films since her teen-age years, learning a range of changing technologies. She has made documentaries in Pakistan, India, Tibet, and the U.S., several of which have been shown on international TV and in film festivals. Her Tibetan Video Archive Project, begun in 2004, is now under GDFP’s umbrella as our work expands into other regions of the world. (Find out more about ongoing and past TVAP projects at this link.)
Between Worlds:A thought-provoking documentary
Now in post-production.
Coming Soon---Watch for links to segments
from our film posted on YouTube
A Film from Global Diversity Film Project
in association with
Rainbow Lotus Productions
and Perception International’s Izilwane-Africa
Co-producers Debra Denker and Tara Lumpkin are back from South Africa with many hours of exciting footage with “Between Worlds” as the overarching and underpinning theme.
Like many documentary-makers, they found not what they had planned, but far more enriching and thought-provoking subjects than they could have dreamed.
The evolving film asks the question: Can the perceptual diversity of traditional indigenous healers, shamans and diviners, modern scientists, passionate activists, and the animals that inhabit our strained ecosystem help prevent the Sixth Great Extinction now in progress?
The film explores the “between worlds” stories of a fascinating selection of black and white South Africans and Americans in research and service work as they interact with the indigenous and modern worlds, the human-wild interface, and the material and spiritual worlds on local and global levels.
On their journey the length and breadth of South Africa, Debra and Tara stayed open to all possibilities. If plans to shoot a certain subject or person were blocked, they more than made the best of the circumstances, agreeing that at the end of the day they obtained valuable footage and insights far surpassing what they had expected.
A Sample of Some of Our Between Worlds Subjects:
The Healers, Shamans, and Diviners
Virginia Rathele, sangoma (traditional healer) and nurse-midwife. Virginia talks of combining muti---African herbal medicine---and allopathic medicine in the AIDS hospice that she and her husband, sanusi sangoma Credo Mutwa, are establishing at their home in Kuruman, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.
Joel Dlalmini, Zulu inyanga (herbalist). Joel tells of the joy he gets from continuing his healing work, even being “semi-retired” at age 81. He introduces us to his “adopted son” Joseph, a bishop in a charismatic Christian church, and his wife Pheto Maureen, who practice a synthesis of traditional African healing and Christianty.
Karen “Busisiwe” Parkin, a white South African nearly completed with her sangoma training. Busisiwe, “the blessed one,” takes us to a “bones throwing” divination in the Zulu town of Eshowe, but when she has her own reading, argues with the sangoma, preferring to trust her own connection with her ancestral spirits and with the plant spirits with whom she works.
Sarah Khoza, Shangaan sangoma trained by Maria the Lion Queen of Timbavati. Sarah throws the bones for both Tara and Debra, confirming their own intuitions about their next steps.
Debra Denker, film-maker and Certified Healing Touch Practitioner. Tara films as Debra teaches an Introduction to Healing Touch to 24 faculty, staff and community members of Funjwa Primary School in Acornhoek, an economically challenged area of Mpumalanga Province.
The Scientific View
Paula Pebsworth, American primatologist. Paula speaks of her observations of how baboons self-medicate in the wild, and of her affection for these often maligned creatures.
Tara Lumpkin, PhD anthropologist, author, and originator of the concept of “perceptual diversity.” Tara offers her observations on shifting perception and consciousness, animal-human interactions, and the growing threat of human overpopulation to our eco-system.
The Activists and Teachers
Becky Harmon, Director of Seeds of Light. Becky speaks of her NGO’s programs in the greater Acornhoek area---from community gardens to school support to micro-credit to drilling bore holes for safe water---and of her Between Worlds commutes from her home in Portland, Oregon to Mpumalanga, and the spiritual beliefs that motivate her.
Linda Tucker, director of the Global White Lion Protection Trust. Linda, who was named “Keeper of the White Lions” by African sangomas, offers an orientation to new volunteer interns, and reflects on how working with “rewilding” White Lions in their endemic region of Timbavati has led her to live between the lions’ world and the human world, and the spiritual and material worlds.
Wendy Strauss, Media Director of the White Lion Trust. Wendy explains how she lives between the fast-paced city life, still dealing with corporate clients online, and the bush, where she lives with no electricity, a battery-powered laptop, and a black mamba snake with whom she shares respectful communication. Wendy and Sidwell, a Shangaan tracker for WLT, present on the White Lions to local schoolchildren.
Rosa Schalkwyk, a white South African humanitarian activist. Rosa recounts her journey from victim of spousal abuse to active participant in building post-apartheid South Africa. She expresses gratitude to Nelson Mandela’s government for passing the first ever Domestic Violence Act in the country, which led to her freedom and later her founding of a project to provide assistance to talented athletes lacking the resources to participate in sports competitions.
Axon Khoza, founder of Mfunyani Cultural Village. Axon speaks of the importance of teaching the youth traditional values of respect through participating in Shangaan songs, dancing, and sharing of food. The White Lions return to Timbavati, he says, “has brought light back to us.”
The Animals:
Can we put ourselves in the paws, hooves, talons, scales, fur and feathers of an astonishing variety of African wildlife? What are they thinking, as individuals and as a collective species consciousness, about ever-increasing human encroachment on the natural world, and ever-shrinking habitat?
As “Between Worlds” follows the threads that connect these diverse beings like the perhaps-real, perhaps-legendary great underground river connecting the continent of Africa, the Lulungwa Mangakatsi spoken of by Credo Mutwa, the film does not attempt to determine what is “true” and what is metaphor, but instead focuses on how being open to different ways of understanding reality---perceptual diversity---is key for planetary survival.
The “Between Worlds” film is part of the larger vision of the Izilwane Project, which uses a variety of media including visual, verbal, and online communication to educate others about the need for reconnection with the natural world that sustains us all.
Funding is urgently needed to make completion of "Between Worlds" possible, as well as completion and distribution of ongoing TVAP projects.
For more information: Email: rainbowlotus1@mac.com
DEBRA DENKER, Project Director
PMB 514
551 W. Cordova Rd.
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Tel/Fax: 505.466.2989
To make a tax deductible donation:
Perception International with GDFP marked in the memo.