It should not go unnoticed that the ground breaking film, Silo a Spiritual path, will receive an award of excellence from the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards (HIIDA.COM) at the historic Raleigh Studios on Saturday June 12 2016.
The award will be presented in the Charlie Chaplin theater named for that loveable figure with his bowler hat, cane and slapstick routines. The studio, located in the heart of Hollywood was home to several Charlie Chaplin movies in the 20s and 30s.
In 1936 Chaplin released Modern Times, a movie inspired by his tour of Europe in the early 1930’s where he witnessed the deplorable conditions brought on by the Great Depression and a conversation he had during that tour with Mahatma Gandhi. Modern Times portrays Chaplin as a factory worker employed on an assembly line and subjected to the indignities of an accelerating conveyor belt where he screws nuts at an ever increasing rate onto pieces of machinery. He finally suffers a nervous breakdown and runs amok throwing the factory into chaos.
In 1940 Chaplin released The Great Dictator, a film that suggested nonviolent resistance to Hitler’s aura of power. It is remembered in part for the power of the film’s final humanistic speech that offers an expression of hope and faith in the human being…
The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us.
In Silo A Spiritual Path we see the same message of hope and faith in humanity expressed throughout the film. We see Silo’s 40 year struggle for active nonviolence against the dictatorships, censorship, violence and brutality he experienced throughout South America and around the world. We see Silo’s reaction to a global social atmosphere that is poisoned by cruelty and that daily becomes crueler.
At the end of the film we see Silo speak with a lot of emotion as he very poetically stands up for people all over the world and their freedom to choose the direction of their lives in front of a system of economic urgencies that bring on unemployment, despair and loneliness. Urgencies taking place in an atmosphere of manipulated information and a growing silence in front of genocide and the plight of refugees fleeing from the many wars going on around the world.
It is very fitting then, that the award is being given in a theater dedicated to Charlie Chaplin and at the heart of a global industry that has the power and means to change the world.
To date, the film has won the Accolade Global Film Award and a Hollywood International Independent Documentary Award of Excellence (HIIDA), and has been selected into festivals in Miami, Barcelona, Israel, Italy and Romania see: http://www.siloaspiritualpath.com/category/awards/
Journalists are invited to attend the private screening on June 12 at 2pm at the Wilshire Screening Room located at 8670 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211, United States, and to interview producer Ana L’Homme about the film and about Silo and his life and teachings.
Please contact OrangeRio to be added to the press list. Ana will also be available for interviews from June 11 to June 19, 2016.
Film Trailer: https://vimeo.com/131598628
Website: http://www.siloaspiritualpath.com
Media and private screening registration contacts
▪ Marcia Barahona, OrangeRio (415) 312-8243, mybarahona [at] OrangeRio.com
▪ Ken Dickinson, (415) 497-8463. kdickinson [at] aol.com
