Filmmakers Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo share the revelations of the making of Wisdom of Our Ancestors

 

Zaya Ralitza Benazzo was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. For as long as she can remember, she has been fascinated with exploring life’s big questions. She feels most at home in nature and, increasingly, within herself. Zaya is a producer and film director with engineering, environmental science, and film degrees. For many years, she worked as an environmental activist in Europe. Her deepest passion is bringing together wisdom from spiritual traditions in service of all life. Zaya believes that individual and collective liberation are inextricably interwoven.

Maurizio Benazzo grew up in Italy, and in 1984 came to the United States on a 98-year-old sailing boat. He started working as an actor, model, and filmmaker, but his thirst for knowledge was only satisfied in 2001 upon encountering I Am That, the seminal work by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, while he was in India shooting the award-winning documentary Short Cut to Nirvana.

Maurizio and Zaya merged their lifelong passions for science and mysticism when they met in 2007, and their first project together was filming the documentary Rays of the Absolute on the life and teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. This project sparked their next level of creation and collaboration: Science and Non-Duality, a global community inspired by the timeless wisdom traditions, informed by modern science, and grounded in direct experience.

Together they have produced and directed several award-winning documentaries including The Wisdom of Trauma, The Art of Life, Rays of the Absolute, Where Olive Trees Weep, The Eternal Song, Mauri, and If an Owl Calls Your Name. They have a new film, In the Circle of Life, which will be shown this Friday, January 16th, at the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz.

They live, work and play on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people, in Sebastopol, California.