The Eternal Song: Echoes of Resilience Across Indigenous Worlds

Commonweal Presents:

The Eternal Song with Maurizio Benazzo and Zaya Ralitza Benazzo and Host Susan Grelock Yusem

Co-presented with SAND (Science and Non-Duality) and Bolinas Film Festival

For tens of thousands of years, indigenous peoples were in deep kinship with the natural world while stewarding ancestral land and wisdom. Through the narratives of colonialism, capitalism, and individualism, our “modern” Western mindset has cast a collective fog of amnesia, and lead us into believing that we are separate from the Earth, each other, and the ancestral realm. Eternal Song is the first in a series of award-winning films that explore the devastating impact of colonization on indigenous people and lands, and cultures--and how our collective future depends on remembering the eternal song of existence which calls us back to our original sense of belonging.

We will start with a half-hour conversation with Zaya Ralitza Benazzo and Maurizio Benazzo, filmmakers and founders of SAND (Science and Non-Duality)—a global community that comes together over these amazing documentaries—followed by a screening of the film (88 minutes).

Zaya Ralitza Benazzo was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. For as long as she can remember, she has been fascinated with exploring life’s big questions. She feels most at home in nature and, increasingly, within herself. Zaya is a producer and film director with engineering, environmental science, and film degrees. For many years, she worked as an environmental activist in Europe. Her deepest passion is bringing together wisdom from spiritual traditions in service of all life. Zaya believes that individual and collective liberation are inextricably interwoven.

Maurizio Benazzo grew up in Italy, and in 1984 came to the United States on a ninety-eight-year-old sailing boat. He started working as an actor, model, and filmmaker, but his thirst for knowledge was only satisfied in 2001 upon encountering I Am That, the seminal work by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, while he was in India shooting the award-winning documentary Short Cut to Nirvana.

Event Details

Address: Gallery Commonweal, 451 Mesa Road, Bolinas, CA

Contact Info: email - thenewschool@commonweal.org // phone - 415-868-0970