ABOUT THE FILM
Part poetry, part memoir-style reflection and part prayer, PARAMITA bears witness to Pajna Choudhury’s 25-year coming out process with her traditional Bangladeshi mother. Told with intimacy, tenderness and a quiet power PARAMITA invites us into a meditation spiritual experience as Prajna connects with Buddhist practices and nature as gateways for intergenerational healing.
PARAMITA represents a bold & unapologetic integration of art as activism and women of color centered storytelling
in both content and process. A key component for the main subject Prajna’s consent relied on Director Kirthi Nath being part of overlapping communities and as a queer South Asian femme, a shared investment to resist exotification. As is fitting, Prajna has been an empowered collaborator. We engage in feedback sessions to keep ourselves aligned with the purposes of showing Prajna’s story in relation to our desire to remake the narrative i.e. decolonizing the story of South Asian American women’s coming out experience, intergenerational healing journey, Buddhism and South Asian spiritual practices.
ABOUT PRAJNA
Prajna Paramita Choudhury is an Oakland based Chinese Medicine practitioner. She is a lay practitioner in Thich Nhat Hanh’s lineage and has been facilitating sanghas in the Plum Village tradition for two decades. She taught Inner Peace, Outer Peace Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation at Energy Matters Acupuncture & Qi Gong for 7 years, now available as an online class. Prajna recently published Listening, a collection of poems from throughout her life. She loves cooking, hikes in nature, and singing in Voices Lesbian a Capella for Justice along with her wife Edie.
COMMUNITY RESPONSE