What is the Rudi Movie?
In 1970 Swami Rudrananda (Rudi) hosted a visit for his then teacher, Swami Muktananda of Ganeshpuri, India. It was Muktananda’s first visit to the U.S., and Rudi and his students went all out to make it memorable. The event included bringing Swami Muktananda and his contingent up to Rudi’s Big Indian ashram in the Catskill Mountains. A four-person film crew of Rudi’s students and a freelance cameraman from CBS documented the classes, lectures and festivities over several days. A 28-minute documentary of that historic visit was completed in 1981.
WHY IS THE RUDI MOVIE IMPORTANT?
It came as a shock to everyone when Rudi was killed on February 21, 1973 in a small plane crash in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York while traveling with three students. While many snapshots and amazing teaching pictures were taken during Rudi’s brief life, the film footage shot in 1970 remains as the only substantial legacy we have of this remarkable teacher of Kundalini yoga giving lectures, offering shakti, and teaching classes on film. To this day the film is a valuable vehicle and teaching class that students of any spiritual tradition can use to broaden their inner work and to receive Rudi’s shakti.
WHAT IS THE RUDI MOVIE PROJECT?
In 2005 the Rudi Movie Project was initiated to preserve and restore the original 16mm film for DVD with the additional intent of reclaiming never-before-seen footage. Many years before Kickstarter a grassroots word-of-mouth email campaign was started to raise the necessary funds for the out-of-pocket expenses of film transfers, necessary software & hardware, and the funds to manufacture the DVDs. Thanks to the generosity of many kind-hearted donors the finished DVD shipped in the fall of 2007!
