(2013, first cut, screening limited to research and educational venues)
Director: Dan Smyer Yu
Production Supervisor: Pema Tseden
Photographers: Pema Tashi, Meng Wang, Jun Zhu, Anchu Bem, Dan Smyer Yü
Sound: Baldor Gyal
Post-Production editing: Jun Zhang
Type: documentary
Length: 60 minutes
Synopsis: Rainbow Rider is a collaborative production of a social scientist and a Buddhist public intellectual. It is a social scientific experiment of the director as well as a public discourse of Khenpo Sodargye – the narrator/protagonist of the documentary film and a renowned Tibetan Buddhist public intellectual in China. Set in the backdrops of Khenpo Sodargye’s recent public events at prominent universities and research institutions in North America and Europe as well as of his teaching activities on his monastic campus in Sertar, Kham, currently western Sichuan Province of the PRC, this film documents his lectures and dialogues with social scientists on the topics of environmental health, human flourishing, the scientific understanding of the mind, and Buddhist vision of world peace. It invites audience to join the ongoing global discussions and debates on whether or not Buddhism is a science of its own.
