Patrick Shen
2021La Source
Patrick Shen
In La Source (pronounced lah-soos), Haiti water does not come easily. Each day, villagers of this small, rural community must choose between enduring a long, treacherous walk to retrieve clean water or drink contaminated water from a nearby river. For over 30 years, the villagers have attempted to address this problem by constructing a means of channeling the water from a natural spring in the mountains, but with limited funding and an unsupportive government their attempts to provide clean water were to no avail. Since he was a teenager, Josue Lajeunesse, along with his brother Chrismedonne have dreamt of remedying this problem for their people. In 1989, Josue moved from La Source to New Jersey where he found employment as a custodian at Princeton University. His custodial work and second job as a taxi driver, which total close to 20 hours a day, allows him to send money home to La Source so that he and Chrismedonne...
La Source
Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality
Patrick Shen
Sam Keen, Gabriel Byrne
Narrated by Gabriel Byrne (Usual Suspects, Vanity Fair, Miller's Crossing), this seven-time Best Documentary award-winning film (Silver Lake Film Festival, Beverly Hills Film Festival) is the most comprehensive and mind-blowing investigation of humankind's relationship with death ever captured on film. Hailed by many viewers as a "life-transformational film," Flight from Death uncovers death anxiety as a possible root cause of many of our behaviors on a psychological, spiritual, and cultural level. Following the work of the late cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Denial of Death, this documentary explores the ongoing research of a group of social psychologists that may forever change the way we look at ourselves and the world. Over the last twenty-five years, this team of researchers has conducted over 300 laboratory studies, which substantiate Becker's claim that death anxiety is a primary motivator of human behavior...
Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality
In Pursuit of Silence
Patrick Shen
A meditative exploration of silence and the impact of noise on our lives. The film takes us on an immersive cinematic journey around the globe—from a traditional tea ceremony in Kyoto, to the streets of Mumbai, the loudest city on the planet—and inspires us to both experience silence and celebrate the wonders of our world.
In Pursuit of Silence
The Dawn Chorus
Patrick Shen
Witness the first light and sounds of a new dawn breaking, as observed around the world one year ago. Patrick Shen’s cinematic meditation was created during the first COVID-19 lockdown by 35 artists from over 13 countries on May 3, 2020. With a soundtrack filled with environmental bird songs and ambient aural awakenings, the contemplative and collective portrait moves from darkness to light as a metaphor for hope and rebirth. 2020, United States, digital, nonverbal, 21 min.
The Dawn Chorus
