Acting
Jan 5, 1915
Chislehurst, Kent, England, UK
Alan Watts
Acting
Biography
Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer and speaker known for interpreting and popularising Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. He received a master's degree in theology from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and became an Episcopal priest in 1945. He left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.
Feature Films (15)
A dance music theatre piece that evokes the world of childhood and its careless pleasures. But beyond pure entertainment, this performance contemplates the meaning and the importance of play when we become adults. World stage premiere dec 7 2017, Paris.
Play
Alan Watts talks about our perception of the world, and how we derive metaphysics from it. Watts recorded this video in 1971 as a pilot for a public television series in the United States.
Conversation with Myself
This VHS video includes two short documentaries by Elda Hartley. In the first, THE ART OF MEDITATION, Alan Watts gives us techniques and advice for meditating. Elda Hartley herself narrates the second film, MEDITATION: THE JOURNEY INWARD, which exposes viewers to different cultural approaches to meditation. Hartley then discusses how meditation enriches one's life, and what it can reveal to us.
The Art of Meditation
Alan Watts discusses the Western dichotomy of work and play, and explains that when you take the play out of work life becomes joyless drudgery.
Work as Play
Trapped by daily routine, a man experiences complete freedom by dreaming himself across the country in a psychedelic Volkswagen with the guiding words of philosopher Alan Watts.
Zen Dog
Alan Watts illustrates in this elegant meditation on Buddhism the nature of reality using the paradigm of flowing water. It is one of his best. "The waters before and the waters after, now and forever flowing, follow each other." Watts conveys the essence of Buddhism by focusing on how to develop greater flexibility and sensitivity to the beauty that surrounds us. His inspired narration, enhanced by beautiful photography and a musical score by Iasos, ensures that his message will last.
The Flow of Zen
A philosophical video and art exploration of the Earth's passage through a black hole.
Until There Was Nothing
A memorial anthology of Alan Watt's work. Watts (1915-1973), who held both a master's degree in theology and a doctorate of divinity, is best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular, and Indian and Chinese philosophy in general.
Zen: The Best of Alan Watts
Visualizes the mood of Buddhism as the oneness of man and nature. Includes commentary by Alan Watts.
Buddhism, Man and Nature
It's a simulation of reality where you can see the world from everything's point of view - it's kind of a philosophy project in the form of a game. There is no narrative or story - just the world as it is. Everything: Gameplay Film is an overview of David O'Reilly video game of the same name, crafted as a short film with a narration by Alan Watts
Everything
Taped by his son shortly before Watts' death, this program captures the noted philosopher/mystic's ideas on the meaning of time and change, if they have meaning at all.
Time and the More It Changes
Television & Series (2)
The Essential Lectures of Alan Watts video series was recorded in 1971 above Muir Woods, California, and in 1972 aboard the ferryboat the SS Vallejo in Sausalito. Produced by his son Mark and directed by long-time archivist Henry Jacobs, the series explores core philosophical themes that spawned over Watts' career.
The Essential Lectures of Alan Watts
Join Alan Watts in season one of On Eastern Wisdom & Modern Life. His inaugural season introduces and begins to break down our understanding of what is and what could be.