A movie that celebrates the spiritual side of running

Documentary filmmaker Sanjay Rawal lives in Queens, New York, where, for more than 20 years, he’s seen them: Runners tracing a half-mile loop around a city block. During 52, often sweltering, days of a New York City summer, these hardy souls try to cover an astounding 3,100 miles (an average of 59.6 miles a day). The race is named for spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy, who believed running gives people an opportunity to challenge themselves and overcome their pre-conceived limitations, a state he referred to as “self-transcendence.” “I always thought there was a film to be made from it,” Rawal  said before his newest film, “3100: Run and Become,” premiered in Sedona in July. “But visually, I thought one couldn’t show this topic of spiritual running by just filming people running around the block. You had to connect it to people in cultures that have been running for thousands of years.”

posted Sunday August 12th