Friday, May 7th at 12:00 PM, Charles Theatre 1

Sunday, May 9th at 1:30 PM, Charles Theatre 5

Director: Khyentse Norbu

Cast: Tshewang Dendup, Sonam Lhamo, Lhakpa Dorji, Deki Yangzom, Sonam Kinga

Country: Bhutan
Year: 2003
Running Time: 108 minutes
Format: 35mm

Khyentse Norbu's first feature film, The Cup, was internationally acclaimed for broadening our Western view of Buddhist ascetic life with great humor and charm. Lyrical, and equally charming, Travellers and Magicians takes us on a journey in the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan. A small country of 700,000 people, Bhutan is wedged between India and China and was the model for the fictitious Shangri-La. Bhutan has an official government commitment to Gross National Happiness, and Buddhist monks outnumber soldiers.

The first feature film shot in Bhutan and in the official Dzongkha dialect, Travellers and Magicians tells the tale of two local men who are eager to experience other cultures, especially Western ones. While understanding the human instinct to seek the new and unfamiliar, Bhutan native Norbu wonders if the message from an early American film classic, made in an imaginary magical land, may be true: there's no place like home.

Produced and shot by a remarkable crew from around the world, including filmmaker Eric Blair from Baltimore, director Norbu used no professional actors, and integrated Bhutanese people into the crew. Buddhist rituals informed important filmmaking decisions like casting and schedule. The result is a unique movie going experience and one of the most beautiful movies ever made.

-- Jed Dietz

Eric Blair's credits include episodic television on award winning shows like NBC's Homicide and HBO's The Corner. In 1999 he co-founded C.Rayburn Production and Post, initially providing content for NFL Films and producing long format shows for The Discovery Channel and ESPN. C.Rayburn rapidly expanded to become a full service production and post solution for features, commercials, and web. Notable C.Rayburn clients include: The Advertising Association of Baltimore, The Baltimore City Police, Columbia University, The Contemporary Museum of Art, CNN, Digital Organism, The Discovery Channel, Enron Wind, ESPN, Fox Networks, Gartner Films, The International Buddhist Film Festival, Lockheed Martin, Media Edge, MGM, National Geographic, The New York Addy Awards, NFL Films, Prayer Flag Pictures, Simpson Films, Steve Yeager Productions and Towson University's Catalyst Theater.

Noa Jones is a writer. Her work can be found in newspapers, magazines, book jackets, and brochures, engraved on jewelry, screaming from billboards, on pre-recorded 800 numbers, in gently prodding press releases for push-up plunge brassieres, in letters to her loved ones, tattooed on arms, crumpled up into balls in the wastepaper basket and on the Web at www.noajones.com. She has written a book on the making of Travellers and Magicians.