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Daily News
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Never Mind the Buddhists
Formerly a youthful criminal with a passion for punk music, Noah Levine is now a devout Buddhist and star of the documentary Meditate and Destroy.
Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 3:55 PM
By FilmStew Staff
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Blue Lotus Films
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A welcome role model
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As the landscape for the theatrical release of independent and documentary films continues to change, many individuals and distribution companies are opting for alternative methods. Such is the case with Meditate and Destroy, Sarah Fisher’s 81-minute profile of punk hoodlum turned peaceful Buddhist and author Noah Levine.
The movie screens this weekend at the Rhizome Café in Victoria, B.C. on July 5th and the Lucky Bar in Vancouver on July 6th; it’s all part of – per the film tour blog – an effort to “bring gangs of spiritual rebels together to view the feature documentary at alternative venues, yoga and meditation centers, bowling alleys, backyard BBQs, and bike-ins. In most cases, admission is on a donation basis.
The Levine mantra has previously manifested itself in the form of two books written by the Santa Cruz, CA native - Dharma Punx: A Memoir and Against the Stream. Fisher meanwhile, a veteran of CBSnews.com, A&E and MTV News, is someone who discovered Buddhism in 2000 and is now herself a devout practitioner.
Meditate features interviews with Levine's Buddhist father Stephen as well as American Buddhism teachers Jack Kornfield and Ajahn Amaro. As Levine Jr. once put it to L.A. Yoga Magazine: “I was incarcerated [at age 17], looking at the rest of my life in prison and thought, ‘Maybe I will try dad’s hippie meditation bullshi*t.’ Suffering opened me to the possibility of trying meditation.”
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