Franz Reichle

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

Documentary account of a man’s life in the face of imminent death – Francisco Varela's story told affectionately and gently, touchingly and astutely. Varela spent his life building bridges: between Western science and Eastern wisdom, neurobiology and philosophy, abstract theory and practical life. This film seeks to deconstructs the prevailing division between science and art.

In "The Dalai Lama -- Scientist", the Dalai Lama tells the unknown story, in his own words, of his lifelong journey into the world of science and technology, and how the world has changed as a result. With extensive, rare, and never before seen footage, this film tells the very human story of the Dalai Lama that no one knows.

With 'AUGENBLICK' (the 'space of an instant'), Franz Reichle has given us a highly unusual work. During turbulent times, two young people find each other, fall in love, fight and ultimately separate. They are looking for new directions and ways of life, taking things one day at a time and squeezing the fulfilment of their desires out of every moment. The 'space of an instant' is surprising in form and style: Reichle positions himself against conventional ways of seeing, and takes an almost anarchic approach to the rules of drama. His point of view is shaped by interior processes: sensations, rather than events, are portrayed in the images appearing on screen. One of the few films which attempts to expand the language of the cinema. Urs Jäggi in Zoom-Filmberater, March 1986.

Planned as the filmic documentation of a journey to find the last nomadic shamans in East Siberia, the film instead captures the failed search for these people, who settled down ages ago.

LYNX is a nature film that goes beyond the usual boundaries of the genre. An essential characteristic of the lynx is that it hides from view (and from the camera). As a result, Franz Reichle takes a highly imaginative approach to tracking down the animal, including interviews with zoologists, gamekeepers and farmers. The lynx can also be seen as a barometer for ecological balance; ultimately, nature itself becomes the subject of this film

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: The personal history of Francisco Varela as told by him on his veranda in Monte Grande, Chile, on February 17, 2001 when he was already greatly weakened by chemotherapy but still extremely present and awake, three months before he died on May 28, 2001. As very few before him have done, Francisco Varela attained levels of accomplishment in Western science as well as in Buddhist philosophy and meditation. ORAL ANTHOLOGY: Individual interviews with Francisco Varela, Amy Cohen Varela, Bruno Latour, H.H. Dalai Lama, Tsoknyi Rinpoche; and poems by Francisco Varela, read by his father, Raúl Varela Rodríguez.

The systematic exploration of consciousness has a longstanding tradition stretching over hundreds of years in Tibetan philosophy. Since 1987 dialogues between Francisco Varela, other Western scientists and the Dalai Lama have been conducted regularly; with topics like healing and destructive emotions, the state of consciousness during sleeping, dreaming and dying etc.. These dialogues open up new paths of knowledge building bridges between Western scientific and Tibetan buddhist thinking, which are highly relevant and meaningful for today and for the future.