Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat. It was first broadcast on PBS on February 2, 1974, and released in VHS format on November 1, 1991. The documentary chronicles Maharaj Ji, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis. It garnered its TVTV production team the 1974 Alfred I. du PontColumbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism.
About Lord of the Universe in brief
Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat. It was first broadcast on PBS on February 2, 1974, and released in VHS format on November 1, 1991. The documentary chronicles Maharaj Ji, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis who was a spokesperson of the Divine Light Mission at the time. A counterpoint is presented by Davis’ Chicago Seven co-defendant Abbie Hoffman, who appears as a commentator. It includes interviews with several individuals, including followers, ex-followers, a mahatma, a born-again Christian, and a follower of Hare Krishna. The film received a negative review in the New York Post, and positive reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. It garnered its TVTV production team the 1974 Alfred I. du PontColumbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism. It was the first documentary made on 1⁄2 in video tape broadcast nationally, and also the first independent video documentary shown on national public television. In a separate storyline, the documentary follows a man named Michael who has come to Houston, Texas, to receive “Knowledge” from Maharaj Ji.
Michael’s experiences are contrasted in the documentary with interviews with ex-premies, recounting their initiation and later disillusionment with Maharaj. Ji’s brother performs in the final documentary, stating: “If this guy is God, the United States of America deserves the God of America of America. The documentary was produced by Top Value Television in association with TV Lab, and was primarily directed by Michael Shamberg TVTV had received initial funding for the documentary through a small grant from the Stern Foundation, and an additional promise from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the post-production budget of US$4,000. The film was generally well-received, and garnered the TVTV team the Alfred I. duPontColumbia Award in Broadcast Journalism in 1974 for their work on Lord of the Universe and the documentary was released on VHS in 1991. The documentary was also released on Blu-ray and DVD in 2001.
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This page is based on the article Lord of the Universe published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
