Santa Fe Premieres "Rumi Returning"

Film on the Sufi poet is released just in time for Rumi's 800th birthday, and will be featured at this year's Santa Fe Film Festival.

Rumi Returning, the documentary biopic produced and written by Kell Kearns and Cynthia Lukas, is slated for its US premiere at the 2007 Santa Fe Film Festival, November 28 through December 2nd.

"Our selection by The Santa Fe Film Festival is a high point in a huge leap of faith," said narrator Lukas. "In my onscreen interview with Coleman Barks, whose translations have made Rumi the most popular poet in the United States, he quotes one of his favorite Rumi poems, 'Gamble everything for love!' We gambled everything for love with Rumi Returning."

2007 is Jalalludin Rumi's 800th birthday. UNESCO declared it The International Year of Rumi, and Rumi festivals suddenly sprang up everywhere.

Kearns and Lukas completed principal photography, dramatizations, and interviews in late May and rushed to the finish line in order to have the HD movie ready for the Rumi mania sweeping the globe.

They dug deep into their own pockets to finance the film's completion. Voila! Virtually overnight the HD movie rocketed off in an impressive launch.

The world premiere of Rumi Returning occurred on September 23rd, at the UNESCO sponsored Universal Forum of Cultures in Monterrey, Mexico. Over a thousand spiritual leaders from every continent and major religion filled the theatre. Inspired, they stayed for an hour following the movie and engaged in spontaneous interfaith dialog.

Anop Vora attended, representing the Jains. "Rumi Returning is a great piece of work," he said. "The message of peace and love emanating from the film should be of lasting value to the whole of mankind."

Akbar S. Ahmed, Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, declared that "the film is of historic importance." Ahmed is the subject of the BBC documentary Living Islam, and the author of Journey Into Islam.

In telling the great Muslim mystic's story, Rumi Returning weaves a tapestry of the past, present and timeless. The movie is enveloped in gorgeous cinematography shot throughout Turkey, and the mesmerizing music and sacred dance of the whirling dervishes that Rumi inspired. The rapturous images complement beautifully Rumi's unparalleled poetry of the universal heart.

"We hope everyone loves this movie," said director Kell Kearns. "Yet we made a conscious effort to show Rumi's universal mysticism as the highest realization of Islam. Given the tragedy of the hijacking of the Muslim ideal today by a misguided few, we want the audience to know that Rumi, as commentator Andrew Harvey puts it, 'is the light in the eye of The Prophet.'"

After the triumph in Mexico things fell into place quickly. Prague, The Czech Republic, asked to host the European premiere at its Rumi Alive Festival, November 8-11th. A Canadian premiere surfaced for November 18-20th at the Middle Eastern Studies Association Conference in Montreal. An expected 2,000 scholars and academicians will attend. The film is slated for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in May 2008.

©Copyright 2007 by AlternativeApproaches.com