Hippie Masala (2008)

In the 1960s and 70s thousands of hippies journeyed east to India in search of enlightenment. Hippie Masala is a fascinating chronicle about flower children who, after fleeing Western civilization, found a new way of life in India.

It is with love we announce that Baba Cesare  has left his suffering body today 29 December 2018.

“I'm nine, it's my first time in India. I don't like it at all: dirt everywhere, poverty, lepers in the streets pushing themselves on trolleys with bloody stumps. We go to visit a large temple in Delhi. To enter you have to take off your shoes and that's the last thing I want to do. I walk barefoot, with the terror of getting some kind of disease. I am shocked and lock myself in the hotel to watch television and eat peanuts. I don't want to go out anymore.

Then shortly before leaving, I put my head back out and in a square, in the midst of the large moving crowd, I see three men crouched, practically naked. They look serene, composed, and their very long hair wrapped over their heads like a kind of crown. One of them is holding a very simple musical instrument, with only one string. They have fewer than beggars, but they look like kings. "Who I am?!" We get closer and people explain to us that they are ascetics. They live alone in the jungle. It seems incredible to me that such people exist. I never forget them " [Folco Terzani from the book, A Barefoot on the Earth]

Baba Cesare felt he was not suitable to have a normal family or a normal job, he wanted something different, another life, always on this Earth, but different, not interested in material issues and needs, but made only of spiritual fulfillments. And so, Cesare leaves Italy to go to India dressed only with rags and begging along the streets. Step by step, people start to trust him, step by step Cesare also learns to speak Hindi and this makes him more reliable as an Indian guru, or rather, Sadhu. A Sadhu is a person who lives with no possessions, such as a home or money.

A Sadhu always enjoys the greatest respect of his fellows and common people who help him to have food, clothes and a place where he can sleep. Cesare attends other Indian gurus to learn the secrets of a spiritual life, showing that an alternative way to live is always possible. Until when, thanks to his knowledge, Cesare is really regarded as an Indian guru and he can live a wonderful life with no goods or other possessions. This story can be read like an educational or spiritual journey, the reflections about the meaning of life are amazing and gripping, the style is sharp, but always true.

Cesare’s life is fully different from the Western life where people are accustomed to seek saints and angels inside the beatification procedures of the Church. Humbleness and patience are the unique ingredients in Cesare’s life, but thanks to them, his life is totally fulfilled. Maybe for us it will be impossible to live like Baba Cesare, but this book reveals that nothing is impossible when accomplished with the true essence of our soul. Nothing is impossible, even with no money, no home, no jobs. This book shakes our sensitivity, screams, make us cry, and shapes a unique book, an adventure novel, but, above all, a spiritual journey inside the real meaning of life on the Earth.

Johann Hari: Lost Connections

Johann Hari on Lost Connections 9/6/21
Author and journalist Johann Hari talks about his book, Lost Connections: Why You Are Depressed and How to Find Hope with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hari, who has suffered with depression as a teenager and an adult, offers a sweeping critique of the medical establishment's understanding of depression and the frequent reliance on pharmaceutical treatments. Hari argues that it is our lost connections with each other, with our work, and with ourselves that explains the rise in depression in recent times.
Streamed live on May 5, 2023 Johann Hari: Lost Connections - a Lecture sponsored by Tommy G. Thompson Center

“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief—for our own lives not being as they should? What if it is a form of grief for the connections we have lost, yet still need?”

Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1979)

"Let the months and the years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear."

This film adaptation of the combat veteran Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel (the book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany) was made in 1979, in that small window of American film history when war suddenly was fully exposed for the obscenity it is and always has been, between the end of the Vietnam War and the election of Ronald Reagan. The Deer Hunter came out the year before in 1978. Apocalypse Now the same year. It was a time when the United States as a culture was seriously questioning the concept of international conflict and military power. Compare a few of the war films of 1980, the year Ronnie Raygun took office:

The Dogs of War: "Mercenary James Shannon, on a reconnaissance job to the African nation of Zangaro, is tortured and deported. He returns to lead a coup."

Private Benjamin: "When her husband dies on their wedding night, Judy decides to join the United States Army. She realizes that she has never been independent in her entire life. What looks like a bad decision at first, turns out not so bad at all."

The Big Red One: "Director Samuel Fuller's autobiographical tale of a special infantry squad and its intrepid sergeant during WWII follows the men from D-Day to the liberation of the Nazi death camps."

There was one last echo of horror in war in this time before the heroics became the standard again. It was far away in Australia, where Gallipoli by Peter Wear was released in 1981. Like another Australian film, The Odd Angry Shot from 1979, it depicted war as pointless. 

War steals life. Not just through death and killing and cost. But it takes youth, it takes laughter, it takes passion and creativity. It kills thought and contemplation. It destroys love. It smashes families, hopes, desires, ambitions. It takes everything and turns it into waste and decay. This film is a brilliant study in that ancient horror.

Politicians start wars
Generals organise them
The people pay for them.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a television film produced by ITC Entertainment, released on November 14, 1979, starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine. It is based on the book of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. The film was directed by Delbert Mann. A joint British and American production, most of the filming took place in Czechoslovakia.