Ancient Futures
Learning from Ladakh (1993, 60 mins.)

Paradise with Side Effects (1999, 40 mins.)

Thursday February 22, 5:30pm and 7:30pm
Produced by The International Society for Ecology and Culture

Ladakh, or “Little Tibet”, is a wildly beautiful desert land high in the Western Himalayas. It is a place of few resources and an extreme climate. Yet for more than a thousand years, it has been home to a thriving culture. Traditions of fugality and cooperation, coupled with an intimate and location-specific knowledge of the environment, enabled the Ladakhis not only to survive, but to prosper.

Then came “development.” Now in Leh, the capital, one finds pollution and divisiveness, inflation and unemployment, intolerance and greed. Centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are under threat form modernization.

Ancient Futures is much more than a film about Ladakh. The breakdown of Ladakh’s culture and environment forces us to reexamine what we really mean by “progress”— not only in the “developing” parts of the world, but in the industrialized world as well. The story of Ladakh teaches us about the root causes of environmental, social and psychological problems, and provides valuable guidelines for our own future.

Paradise with Side Effects, sequel to the popular Ancient Futures, is a documentary following two Ladakhi women on a trip to England as part of a “reality tour.” Reality tours introduce Ladakhi participants to everyday life in the West as it really is, thereby helping to balance some of the glamorized images of the modern world that are generated by tourism, advertising and the media.

On traveling to the third world, visitors from industrialized nations are often shocked at the poor conditions they find. What is interesting about Paradise with Side Effects is that the roles are reversed. The Ladakhi women are shocked at the poor conditions they find here in the first world. Conditions that most of us accept as normal.

Discussions to Follow Each Screening. Please join us.

Producer's Web Site: www.isec.org.uk/pages/av.html