Stephen Olsson

GLOBAL SPIRIT is a unique inquiry into humankind’s belief systems, wisdom traditions, and states of consciousness. This TV/web series sheds light on humankind’s deepest questions, tracing the eternal, yet still evolving human quest for meaning, truth and wisdom.

SOUND OF THE SOUL is a compelling portrait of an Arab country where Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived together in relative peace for centuries. Beautifully photographed during the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, the film presents unforgettable performances from groups from Morocco, Ireland, Russia, Afghanistan, Mauritania, the USA, Portugal and France, which carry viewers into what the film's Moroccan sufi guide calls "the hearing of the heart": the essential Oneness at the core of all religions and faiths.

In the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier invites five of his Baruya friends and informants to his house to discuss Baruya kinship and rules of marriage. As Godelier poses questions, the kinship rules that provide the cohesive fabric of Baruya culture are brought to life. Abstract terms are given practical meanings as Godelier investigates Baruya customs of stealing wives, exchanging sisters for wives, stealing names and exchanging 'food for blood.'

Healing a Soldier’s Heart transports us into the troubled hearts and minds of four Vietnam veterans as they begin the courageous healing process to alleviate their severe PTSD. Still traumatized 40 years later, the veterans bravely journey back to the sites where they witnessed and committed atrocities of war. In the process, they come face to face with victims and experience Vietnamese culture through a new lens that fosters the compassion and the mutual forgiveness necessary for healing.

This multi-faceted film, photographed in both 1969 and in Paris in 1982, illustrates an anthropologist's actual fieldwork methods and personal relationships among the Baruya, and provides an in-depth view of the Baruya's traditional salt-based economic system. The film follows Dr. Godelier as he explores the complexities of food production and the effects of new technologies. He comments: "I have to find and bring together the different pieces of Baruya culture... That's my job, to find the story."

Jim Lindeloff, Andy Schipsikowiak, Alexander Sekretaryov and Naoko Nanjo came from the US, Britain, the Soviet Union and Japan. They died in Afghanistan. Using the dead men's material, talking to their families and with the help of original footage shot behind the battle lines, directors Stephen Olsson and Scott Andrews , tell the harrowing story of four journalists, intent on exposing war for what it is, and dying in the attempt.

After 40 years, Silvia Morini returns to the palatial house of her youth in Cuba, where her nostalgia for a pre-Castro world confronts modern Cuban reality. Yet as Silvia discovers an evolving Cuba, she herself undergoes a surprising change-not entirely altering her political outlook but becoming, as she puts it, "more human."