for W3c validation
I watched Freedom Ahead tonight in Chiang Mai. It was the final screening at Chiang Mai Documentary Arts Festival. It’s a video everyone should watch. In fact, I’d argue it’s the type of movie they should play in schools.
The message is simple. Simplicity in life is king. Don’t worry if you’re not following the “expected path”. Working your life away to make money doesn’t (usually) make you happy.
For those of you unhappy & not fulfilled with life right now, quit bitching. Figure out what makes you happy and what you want out of life, and go do it.
Don’t have any idea where to start?
Travel. Talk to people with extremely varied backgrounds. Climb a mountain. Go diving. Go on a safari. Plant trees. Volunteer at a local school. Go camping in the rain forest.
Do anything out of the norm.
Don’t continue grinding away at your 9-5 (or 8-8 more likely) for another 5 years hoping your life is somehow going to get better on its own. Chances are good, it’s not.
Here’s the trailer:
Watch it.
A message from the Director:
Never before in known history have so many people relied on so few for the basic essentials of life. In our present-day democracies, freedom is slowly being commodified. We have been giving our democratic governments more and more freedom while they have been busy restricting ours. In the name of democracy and global progress laws are drafted that will outlaw simple activities that empower man, like growing our own food. By taking our freedom for granted we could be on the verge of losing it. Are we still free when we can’t grow our own food anymore or when peoples livelihood depends heavily on how we interact with the money-hungry machine democracy has become. We need to be governed less and become less dependent on a system that is simply not sustainable. An empty system that will offer no reward, when we feel it is time to start enjoying life. It is not democracy that will offer true freedom, it is reclaiming the spaces that were taken away by democracy.
Set against the backdrop of the most celebrated democracy in the world -India- we learn how governments are pushing the democratic dream, while stealing and selling peoples land to foreign corporations on consumerists behalf. In the documentary film Freedom Ahead we visit the people who are the conscience in a world which is losing its moral principles. These people regain control over their lives by being independent and living self sufficiently. By doing so they obtain the highest valued asset of all times: real freedom. This collection of committed individuals does not constitute a movement. It is dispersed and fiercely independent. It is taking shape in universities, elementary schools, farms, communities and many other places. It is experimentally emerging as a global humanitarian movement rising from the bottom up. Freedom Ahead colorfully captures this almost instinctive response, the largest social movement in all of human history through lucid footage, inspirational stories and an evocative soundscape.
