Bardsongs

Running time: 94 mins

The art of the bards, singing story-tellers from the dawn of time, still exists today as a living, vital art form in many places on the globe. Here are three of them.

In India?s Rajastan, in African Mali and in trans-Himalayan Ladakh, the bard?s songs tell ancient tales that simultaneously entertain, entrance and teach the stories specific to each culture, the truths universal. Counterpointing and illuminating the musician?s skill, the film shows us the ancient tales themselves, perfectly acted, brought to life with an immediacy only the cinema can render.

The music is absolutely mesmerizing in its directness and beauty; the stories delightful, wise and involving. As the ancient persists into the present, the specific and the universal merge, and we see how much more alike we are than we are different.

- Charlie Cockey

Film sponsored by the Applied Materials Foundation.