AYURVEDA: ART OF BEING

Director Pan Nalin / 2001 / India/Germany/Switzerland

"Filmed largely in the south-western Indian state of Kerala, Pan Nalin's (director of MIFF 2002's Most Popular film Samsara) film offers glimpses of several different practitioners of traditional holistic medicine at work. They display a dizzying variety of methods, related only by their assumption that the medicine of the West is fraudulent and ineffective. One man grinds precious gems into a powder that is said to cure 360 different diseases. Another distributes strips of bark, which are said to be effective against everything from cancer to impotence.

"Nalin observes all of this with perfect, passive credulity. The camera itself seems to be smiling beatifically at the assorted wise men and spiritual teachers who pass before it." —New York Times

"The film takes a few gentle pokes at Western medicine and the way our doctors tend to get rich from their skills.The doctors in the film subscribe more to the Patch Adams method: treat the person and not the disease. It helps, when watching Ayurveda to have just a Iittle bit of faith."—San Francisco Examiner

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