Jim Belleau was born in 1956 in Salem, Massachusetts. After studying cinematography in college and working in the industry for three years, he left the Boston area and settled in upstate New York. Purchasing and operating a picture framing business in Oneonta he met a Work teacher, David Kherdian, in the early Nineties. Kherdian directed a group in Morris, New York for several years. Belleau returned to creative filmmaking in 1994 and has produced a series of documentaries that address the issues of meaning and purpose combined with images of beauty. Experiences With The Sacred Movements is the latest documentary released under the name of his video business, Acorn Productions.
Author/Artist: Jim Belleau
ISBN: 3-9808656-1-4
Publisher: Acorn Productions
First published: 2003
A film directed by Jim Belleau
VHS, 42min
The dances called 'Movements' are essential in G.I. Gurdjieff´s teaching, further consisting of orally transmitted ideas, books and musical works.
Practising Movements can generate a form of energy difficult to find elsewhere.
What are these energies and psychological effects generated by doing Movements and how can they be described? This film explores these questions through nine in-depth interviews, lavishly illustrated with photographs and film fragments of Movements.
Jim Belleau‘s film stands out, not only as the first attempt ever in this area of investigation, but also as a unique and sensitive picture of a group of people dedicated to this discipline.
This video is available in NTSC-Format from June 2003. (NTSC-format is used in the U.S.A., Canada and Japan.)
It will be available also in PAL-Format from the end of July 2003. (This is a format used in Europe.)
The video shows a variety of clips of Movements
The video can be bought from the web site of Gurdjieff-Movements.net either with PayPal or by phone from Acorn Productions.
Reviews
It is not so long ago that the Movements Foundation came out with a CD-rom presenting the Movements to a wider public in that format, which was meant to give a taste and a possibility to follow the Movements in practice.
Jim Belleau's film focuses on presenting the views of people who have been taking part in the Movements and I regard it as an introduction to what the movements mean to different persons.
I happened to read this week about A. R. Orage, a man very close to Gurdjieff, 'my brother' as Gurdjieff himself said. Orage was back from his years in New York and in 1934 he said that he wanted to work on the idea of 'teaching' the Movements to children; he said he would get Gurdjieff's permission to do so, but he died before he was able to put the idea into practise.
'If one thing could be different, everything could be different'. The Movements have been strictly held in the secrecy of the Foundations and the Gurdjieff Society. Could it have been different, if Orage...
It is good to see that the veil is 'little by little' moved away from something so essential for the development of attention as the Movements are. To see and hear the people talking about the Movements is bringing them very much closer to each of us.
I wish that the marketing of the video goes well and spreads the information about the Movements also to people who perhaps have never heard of them. I feel that in this way they will gain some of the appreciation that they deserve. Perhaps one day they can even be taught to the children!
(There is an interesting article of Movements taught to children in Vladivostok, Russia, written by Plavan N. Go
Reijo Oksanen, Switzerland
http://www.arssacra.org
added 2003-06-27