#9. Como ficar sozinha/How to be alone

#4. "Sadhu" - on cinemas in Switzerland from 26 September

I was leaving the movie theater one of these days and just happened to pass by this big poster with an image of (what appeared to my eyes as) some sort of traditional Yogi.  The title of the film announced on it was "Sadhu - seeker of truth".  I had always been curious about the Sadhus - 'holy men' from the Hindu tradition -, so I checked about the film in the internet, found the trailer interesting and now I'm waiting to watch it as soon as it reaches the cinemas of Geneva.  Gaël Métroz, the film director, is Swiss himself and in the website about the project he put on he describes the Sadhus as follows:

"From Sanskrit, 'good man, Holy Man', the sadhu makes the vows of poverty and chastity.  It is the mythical character of India, representing both the philosophy and the rejection of material goods in favor of spirituality.  'Sad' means truth and 'sadhu', the seeker of truth.  The sadhus cut all ties with their families, and have no wealth.  They live withdrawn, or are begging on the roads of India and Nepal feeding themselves with donations of the devotees.  Today they constitute 0.5% of India's population, but the authentic sadhus do not usually show outside the Kumbha Mela.  They practice meditation.  To part from the physical suffering that make men vulnerable, they impose themselves many mortifications".

There will be a premiere the 26 of September in Geneva with the presence of the director.  The (beautiful) website of the project is worth having a look:

http://www.sadhu-lefilm.com/le-film/

And the trailer (subtitles in French!) you can watch here:

#3. Meditating with Hayao Miyazaki

I found out about Hayao Miyazaki when I was living in New York, in 2002.  By then I had two Japanese flatmates, and he was getting popular everywhere because of his Spirited Away, which was soon to become a fever and to be awarded prizes in the United States and the golden bear in the Berlin Festival.  At that point I didn't know any of that, and the three of us used to watch his films together, in Japanese, Izumi and Mariko making their best to translate them into English for me...  It was from them, my flatmates, that I learnt that Hayao Miyazaki is worshiped as some sort of deity in Japan, and that one of his main distinctive artistic features lies in the fact that he uses Shintoist elements in his movies: nature is usually the main character, placed between the material and the spiritual levels.  I took this week to watch most of his stuff, which I found available at a film store nearby.  This is one of my favorites: