Director/Producer: Kim Shelton Producers: Joanne Feinberg, Chris Brown
Description:
Set at an ancient nunnery above the majestic Irrawaddy River, A Thousand Mothers is an unprecedented look into the lives of Buddhist nuns in Sagaing, Myanmar, an ancient religious region with one of the largest concentrations of monasticism in the world. While the choices available to girls and women in Myanmar are quite limited, the film poetically unfolds to reveal unexpected opportunity and beauty as young orphans find a refuge, an education, and a healthy environment with older nuns. The pink and orange robed nuns, ranging in age from seven to seventy, have a deep spiritual commitment to following the Buddha's teachings as a way of life. A Thousand Mothers is a celebration of this unique life, and its value as a force for good in our troubled world.
Biography: Kim Shelton has been making award-winning documentary films for over thirty years. Her tastes are eclectic and she has covered a very wide range of subjects from cowboys to Sudanese refugees, war veterans and now, Buddhist nuns. Her films, A Great Wonder, Cowboy Poets, The Highly Exhalted, Lost Borders and The Welcome, among others, have won numerous film festival awards, and have been broadcast nationally and internationally on POV, PBS, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel and the BBC.
Joanne Feinberg is a producer, story editor and consultant at FeinFilm. From 2005 through 2015, she was director of programming for the Ashland Independent Film Festival in Oregon. Joanne began her career editing and producing award-winning documentaries and commercial projects in NYC and San Francisco for over fifteen years. She is a Tisch School of the Arts graduate with a degree in cinema studies and film production.
Chris Brown is a San Francisco based writer/director/editor who has been making films for over fifteen years. He edited the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury winner A River Changes Course. Brown co-directed and edited The Next Frontier, which won a regional Emmy Award for Best Documentary. His feature, Fanny, Annie & Danny, won sixteen awards internationally, and was named a “Critics Pick” by the NY Times.
