Does an 800-year old Sufi mystic hold the key to world peace?
This past Sunday, May 17, documentary filmmakers Kell Kearns and Cynthia Lukas came to Fremont to present a discussion of a new PBS documentary on Afghan poets, now in pre-production. In this special event held in the Afghan Coalition meeting room, participants first viewed “Rumi Returning,” the filmmakers acclaimed documentary about the mystic MAWLÂNA JALÂLUDDIN BALKHI RUMI.
The purpose of the visit was to answer questions and solicit ideas for the future film: “Afghanistan: A Nation of Poets.” The film will be the first major documentary on Afghan poetry and poets. Twelve individuals from a local Afghan poet’s group attended the Afghan Coalition event and will stay in communication with the filmmakers as they make the new documentary, which will be part of a four-part series on Afghan culture.
Filmmakers Description of the New Film
Afghanistan: A Nation of Poets will be the first major documentary on Afghan poetry and poets. The film will make an historical sweep of the Afghan poetic tradition, classical and contemporary, in the two major languages of Dari and Pashto, literary and folk, performed by men and women.
Afghanistan has one of the richest extant oral traditions on the planet, thriving in what anthropologist Louis Dupree described as “a literate culture but a non-literate society.” And yet its poets, even such national icons as Khalili quoted above, are virtually unknown to the outside world.
The singular exception is Jallaludin Rumi. Born 800 years ago near Balkh in what now is northern Afghanistan, Rumi – or “Balkhi,” as Afghans proudly call him — has risen to world literary prominence and currently ranks as America’s best-selling poet. Rumi Returning, the producers’ documentary about the master poet, has been broadcast on more than 330 PBS stations since September 2008, and screened at inter-cultural venues in 9 countries.
They intend for Afghanistan: A Nation of Poets to repeat this success with a PBS broadcast revealing the work and creative ethos of other profound Afghan poets, a rich resource of human wisdom and humor largely hidden until now from international consciousness. They have received an enthusiastic response to A Nation of Poets from American Public Television, the major distributor of PBS programs.
Dr. Whitney Azoy, former American Institute for Afghanistan Studies director and co-producer of Afghanistan: A Nation of Poets, will accompany Afghanistan location filming as in-country coordinator. An anthropologist and four-time Fulbright grantee whose Afghanistan experience began as a US diplomat, Dr. Azoy has been closely involved with the country over the past 38 years. He is facilitating our close connection to AIAS, the highly respected, Kabul-based cultural research center.
Positioned at the crossroads of Eurasia, Afghanistan has traditionally served as an artistic and intellectual bazaar. Here diverse ideas and modes of expression have been traded for millennia. A Nation of Poets begins by recalling the long sequence of cultural influences upon Afghanistan: Zoroastrism, Hellenism, Buddhism, and Islamic Sufism. However distinct these world views and sensibilities, they have forged over time a remarkable heritage of spiritual poetry.
That legacy remains vibrant today, and A Nation of Poets concentrates on the living present. The producers have already gained unprecedented access to interviews with and about – as well as performances by – modern and contemporary Afghan poets. The filming of the poets has already begun with interviews with two oft quoted ex-patriot Afghan poets, Abdul Jahani, and Saduddin Shpoon.
A Nation of Poets will come alive as contemporary poets and singers (some of them illiterate) perform live. Folk tales, those ancient, colorful commentaries on the nature of Afghan culture, will be retold with powerful, accompanying visuals when they serve to illumine a deeper understanding of the poetic traditions. All gatherings of Afghans feature poetry, and the film attends both time-honored festivals and new celebrations such as those honoring the recently martyred Resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood. As scholar Dr. M. Nazif Shahrani explains on camera: “There is no end to the importance of poetry in Afghanistan. Poetry begins and ends everything, every gathering, there.”
As in Rumi Returning, the producers use evocative landscape — sometimes desolate, sometimes majestic — to visualize the spoken poetry and bring to bear its meaning. The camera lens celebrates the too-often unrecognized beauty of Afghanistan and her people. More than war, crime, and corruption, it is this panorama – the grandeur of deserts, mountains and rivers — that informs the Afghan heart. These scenes, enhanced by the traditional music of Afghanistan, move the film across a timeless land where poetry is a passionate obsession.
The producers seek production, promotion, and distribution funds to support the making of Afghanistan: A Nation of Poets, an hour long television documentary filmed in High Definition suitable for theatre screens. Their goal is to deliver the finished program for PBS broadcast, international television, schools, with an accompanying educational website, and home DVD distribution. They wish to repeat the expansive global audience approach of Rumi Returning by screening the movie at venues such as the UNESCO Universal Forum of Cultures, the new Tribeca Festival in Dubai, and the International Sufi Conference in Fes, Morocco Afghanistan deserves to be known for the deep humanity of its poetic tradition. The film will serve to balance negative stereotypes of war, corruption, and narcotics.
“A cry is locked
in my heart.
Where’s my reed flute?
Home’s become a cage.
Which way to the desert?
First suffering occupied me by day,
then grief from evening to dawn.
Where is your face like a flower, Saaqi?
Where are the cries of the drunks?”
~Khalilullah Khalili
20th cent. Afghan Poet Laureate
(from An Assembly of Moths)
www.rumireturning.com
Playwright David Meth would like to invite everyone to come see his play, TO THE DEATH OF MY OWN FAMILY at the 
