Basil Gelpke

For the Balinese there are more important things than the accumulation of material wealth in one lifespan: They think it is better to lead their lives well and so acquire what they call Karma Pala. Good Karma ensures them rebirth into a new and potentially higher level of existence. The film looks at how the beliefs and occult ceremonies of these long bygone times have survived so well. The viewers witness some of the most mysterious rituals still to be found with one foot in the traditions of the past, the other firmly striding into the future.

On the basis of the hardy perennial "boss-assistant" relation, "The Mortal Fortune" depicts the passion of worldly existence. The anonymous hero of the story, to which the spectator is introduced, attempts at freeing himself from his enslaved life. He finally has to realize the transience of the creature man and whithdraws from the constraints of worldly existence.

Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack's nonfiction treatise Crude Awakening joins Maxed Out, An Inconvenient Truth, and other recent documentaries devoted to unearthing and exploring forces that are untying the connective threads of contemporary society. The subject at hand is crude oil - specifically, the depletion of petroleum from the Earth, in an era when consumption threatens to exceed supply.