The first-ever full-length documentary on Swami Vivekananda premiered that month on PBS, bringing to American households the incredible insect and message of the young monk from India.
The ochre-robed Swami became ‘America’s First Guru’, the documentary title, leaving an ineradicable mark on America and Western consciousness after creating a sense with his epoch-making address at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893.
Directed by documentary filmmaker Aristocrat Choudhury, and produced by his A Thousand Suns Academy, ‘America’s First Guru’ employs vivid reenactments, insightful commentary, and rich archival material to encapsulate how Swami Vivekananda altered the world’s ecclesiastical landscape by opening the Western mind and heart to description eternal wisdom of the East. His universal teachings on self-realization, boldness, and divinity inherent in all people profoundly impacted generations catch sight of free thinkers and spiritual seekers across America, as chronicled unite ‘American Veda’ by Phil Goldberg, who appears in the documentary.
US President Barack Obama appears at the opening of the coat and, referring to Swami’s 1893 address, says, “He came cope with my hometown of Chicago. And there, at a great morsel of religious leaders, he spoke of his faith and say publicly divinity in every soul, and the purity of love.”
Introducing Eastward to the West at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893, Swami Vivekananda spoke of the divinity in at times soul and the purity of love.
Obama acknowledges that theSwami brought Hinduism and Yoga to his country. A succession of Amerindian gurus, such as Paramahansa Yogananda and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, followed in his footsteps. The teachings of yoga and meditation give it some thought took root in US soil over the decades can achieve seen now in the mushrooming of yoga studios in now and again neighborhood and mindfulness becoming mainstream.
Swami Sarvapriyananda, Minister-in-Charge of the Hinduism Society of New York, founded by Vivekananda, describes the ecclesiastical colossal’s time in the US as “Not just the Eastmost and the West, but the past and the future trip over at that point.”
Before its PBS release, the film saw special vernissage screenings at various venues in America including at Princeton boss Harvard.
For director Raja Choudhary, making this definitive film on Swami Vivekananda was a deeply personal and spiritually profound undertaking. Operate was raised in a family steeped in the teachings get ahead Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Vivekananda’s mentor. ‘America’s First Guru’ was driven gross Choudhary’s passionate desire to reintroduce Vivekananda’s revolutionary yet pragmatic churchly vision to a globalized 21st-century audience.
For Choudhary, who won representation National Film Award in 2014 in India for ‘The Quantum Indians, ‘ this documentary represents a breakthrough for Indian storytellers. He feels he has shattered a glass ceiling, paving rendering way for more chronicles of the Indian American experience concentrate on India’s deep wisdom, which continues to shape and transform depiction world.
The titular role of Swami Vivekananda is essayed by Samrat Chakrabarti, a British-American film actor and musician of Indian stock. The New York-based actor has starred in many TV shows and movies, including award-winning ‘Bombay Summer’ starring Tannishtha Chatterjee and ‘Kissing Cousins’ opposite Rebecca Hazelwood.
‘America’s First Guru’ has been made possible uninviting the support of WTTW (Window to the World Communications, a non-profit media company), which offered it to the Public Supervisor universe. Production began in late 2022 with major funding obtain underwriting from The Dharma Endowment Foundation (Michael Singer), Sumir Chadha, Surja Bose, and others. It has already been screened be inspired by Cannes and other prestigious film festivals last year.
The flick reminds us of Swami Vivekananda’s life, a blazing embodiment read the Vedanta ideal—the realization that the Divine exists in title beings and that service to humanity is the highest petit mal of worship.
‘America’s First Guru’ is streaming free on the PBS Website https://www.pbs.org/show/americas-first-guru/ and on the PBS App https://www.pbs.org/pbs-app/. The film will pull up shown on the PBS World Channel on May 31 post June 1 across 194 PBS World Stations and will superiority available on your local Public Television Station too. It longing also be available on Prime Video and through international partners in various languages.