is a lot like his movies -- friendly, hopeful, full of electrifying ideas. He is an award-winning filmmaker with dozens of films and videos under his belt, including Scared Sacred, named one of Canada's Top 10 movies of 2004, and winner of the 2005 Genie (Canadian Academy Award) for best feature documentary.
Bones of the Forest, his 1995 environmental medittion,was co-directed with Heather Frise and won nine major film awards, including a Genie for best featurelength documentary and best of the festival at Hot Docs. Ripper's newest movie, Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action, has been wowing audiences around the world with its investigation of how we are connected to each other and to this planet.
"(Fierce Light's) message of hope and change is delivered via magnificent visuals." -Liz Braun, Toronto Sun
If rockers were the cultural gurus of the sixties, and techies like Steve Jobs the nineties version, documentary filmmakers may very well be the new prognosticators of where we’re heading. Velcrow Ripper is a clear example. His widely praised documentary Scared Sacred, a tour of war-devastated lands, was less a documentary and more a meditative call to arms. So is his second film in a planned trilogy, Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action.
While filming Scared Sacred, Ripper found that what got people through horrific wartime tragedy was a sense of personal meaning: “One of those sources of meaning, was to take action,” he says,”and I began to realize that having a depth of understanding in one’s inner life, and taking action to create change, is a truly harmonious combination. In fact, they are meant to go together.”
This kind of talk has made Ripper the doc community’s version of a star. He gives lectures and conducts workshops to share his vision of spiritually conscious activism. Something new is afoot, his films argue, and that’s what Ripper has become a figurehead for: an acknowledgement that spirituality seems to be at the heart of activism. - Guy Dixon, Globe and Mail
