Product Description

Winner of the WorldFest 2003 Gold Special Jury Award for Outstanding Excellence Gurdjieff's Legacy tracks Mr. Gurdjieff's struggle to establish the ancient teaching of The Fourth Way in the West. It covers the final period in his life, 1924 to 1949, and was shot on site at the Prieuré, Paris, Mont St. Michel, Lascaux, Monte Carlo, London, Lyne Place, New York, Mendham, New Jersey, and Avon cemetery. It traces Gurdjieff's life from his near-fatal car crash through to his giving meetings during the Nazi-occupation of Paris to his death in 1949. Examined in depth are the writing of his Legominism All and Everything and his relationships with Orage, Ouspensky and Bennett. Also included is the Rope and his final trip to the Caves of Lascaux.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78470 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-04-02
• Format: NTSC
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

Review
For years now, Patrick Patterson has been the most interesting and substantial of Gurdjieff's biographers. Gurdjieff's Legacy is absolutely gripping, and the best yet. --Colin Wilson

About the Director
William Patrick Patterson is the founder/director of The Gurdjieff Studies Program, the author of five books on The Fourth Way, and the director/narrator of the award-winning documentary video trilogy The Life and Significance of G.I. Gurdjieff. He is also the founder/editor of The Gurdjieff Journal (est. 1992), the first domestic and international Fourth Way journal. He is the direct and longtime pupil of John Pentland, the man Mr. Gurdjieff chose to lead the Work in America.

Customer Reviews

Best of the trilogy...a piece of art!
Gurdjieff's Legacy tells the story of the final part of G.I. Gurdjieff's life where after receiving many "no's" in passing on the ideas to his students, he finally receives a "Yes" from the writing of his three book legominism All & Everything. This has really opened a door for me for more explorations of the ideas of The Fourth Way. The visuals used such as the video and photo montages for me made this video a piece of art, one that you will want to see for yourself.

Best DVD in the Series
The third DVD in Mr. Patterson's series gets more at the `meat' of the Gurdjieff teaching, especially as it pertains to the student-teacher relationship as exemplified by Gurdjieff's relationships with P.D. Ouspensky, A.R. Orage, and J.G. Bennett. Once again, Mr. Patterson pieces together much of what was written by these students, not just in published works, but in personal notes, diaries, letters, and such, to give more complete and palpable insights on their experiences, understandings/misunderstandings, and reactions to Mr. Gurdjieff. I think that Mr. Patterson demonstrates core Work ideas well in his narrative and examples. Still presented in a timeline format with on-location footage, this chapter covers Gurdjieff's life from the time he was teaching in Fountainbleau in 1924 through his death in 1949.

Establishing the Teaching
Gurdjieff's Legacy extends the history presented in Gurdjieff's Mission and expands the themes explored there. Though the "PR" may be that Gurdjieff moved in a straight line toward his aims, the truth is that there were a number of setbacks, not least the failure of his "senior students" to transmit the teaching without distortion (and without their "chief feature" interfering). This documentary traces Gurdjieff's intense work to establish the teaching, with supporting footage from Paris to London to New York. It documents his near-fatal car crash, the closing of the Prieuré, the writing of All and Everything, the groups established during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and his trip to the now-closed caves of Lascaux.

The underlying thread is the place of All and Everything, particularly the First Series (Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson) in providing a touchstone to any seriously interested student.

This DVD release incorporates a significant re-editing of the original VHS version.