By Callum Ludwig
A new film from Warburton filmmaker Peter Downey is screening next week at the Warburton Arts Centre.
Known for featuring the local area prominently in a lot of his films, Mr Downey has strayed away for ‘Spiritually Incorrect’, an exploration of the pros and cons of spirituality.
Mr Downey said the main takeaway from the film for him is that spirituality is a mystery that no one really knows the answer to.
“A lot of people think they know what’s going on in the afterlife and all that sort of thing when in fact, it’s just a bunch of stories no one really knows and perhaps it’s best left at that,” he said.
“We go into the psychology of how we can get along with each other in this life and the here and now, rather than professing to know what happens when we die or if there’s a god or a devil or anything like that.”
Mr Downey headed to Byron Bay for the film in order to interview former Buddhist monk and now yoga, mindfulness coach and satirist Alan Clements to discuss the topic in ‘wellness spiritual influencer capital of Australia.’
Mr Downey said there’s a lot of ego in the spiritual world from Catholics to New Ages to fundamentalist Islam.
“I felt that I was on the same wavelength with because I’d moved up to Byron Bay for a while, the new age, spiritual, yoga capital of Australia and I had already been through my own journey and used to be deeply into the New Age stuff,” he said.
“It was my spiritual background and it’s very commercialised, New Age spirituality has shops devoted to consumerism and selling crystals.”
Mr Clements moved to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma as a young man and became a Buddhist monk after struggling with the effects of drugs and alcohol on his life. Mr Downey took an interest in his story after seeing him perform a show in Byron Bay and reached out to document it in the film.
Mr Downey said he also spoke to Mr Celements about his time as a war correspondent during the Bosnian war, where Catholic Bosnian Croats, Orthodox Bosnian Serbs and Bosniak Muslims were in conflict.
“He talks about his experiences there and how he saw these ideological battles, which is timely given what’s happening now with Israel and Palestine where again we’ve got these ancient ideological battles going on,” he said.
“It’s actually given more relevance now to this film than it was when I first made it so I was a bit afraid to show it around here or anywhere because it pushes a few buttons.”
Spiritually Incorrect can be seen at the Warburton Arts Centre on Thursday 30 November at times between 7.30am and 9.30pm, with tickets available for purchase at yarraranges.vic.gov.au/Experience/Events/Spiritually-Incorrect.
