Kundun meets Pull My Daisy in Bari Pearlman and Jesse Thompson’s The Dharma Brats: Growing Up Buddhist in America, a feature documentary about Gen-X’ers raised in America’s first Tibetan Buddhist community in Boulder, Colorado.

Subjects in the film reminisce about their unconventional upbringing and reflect on what caused their harmonious community to implode as it did. The community, or Sangha, was largely dissolved in the mid-’80s after a move to Halifax; founder Trungpa Rinpoche’s subsequent death from liver disease at 47; and allegations that Rinpoche’s chosen "Dharma heir" had willfully introduced HIV into the community.

"The film is about a group of kids who are born into, rather than choose, spirituality," says Pearlman. "They’re struggling with the same questions of faith as [other religious adepts], but theirs is such a different mindset – bridging East and West – it makes assimilation into the secular culture that much more challenging."

Thompson, 26, began Dharma Brats as a book project in 1994. Pearlman, who has worked for the Hamptons and New York Women’s film festivals, later came on board and is helping to raise the $200,000 production budget. (Pearlman’s own 30-minute doc, Mah Jongg: The Tiles that Bind, co-directed with Phyllis Heller, premieres at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in July.)

The Dharma Brats is being shot on Super- 16mm by Anthony Hardwick (Frathouse) and Joaquin Baca-Asay (Ratchet). The filmmakers have already completed a 14-minute section culled from a dinner party reunion in an East Village loft on the 11th anniversary of Rinpoche’s death. The remainder will be shot over six weeks in August and September including two weeks in Colorado, a stop in L.A., and a journey up the East Coast to a buddhist monastery in Vermont, and to Halifax. Dharma Brats should be done by year’s end. All rights are still available.

Crew: Producers/Directors, Bari Pearlman, Jesse Govinda Thompson; Cinematographers, Joaquin Baca-Asay, Anthony Hardwick; Sound, Caleb A. Mose; Editor, Lana Lin; Composers, Tim Morton and Mark Revell. Contact: Bari Pearlman, Crazy Wisdom Pictures, Inc., 26 Grove Street, Suite 2E, New York, NY 10014. Tel/Fax: (212) 989-8978.

Backward Looks, Far Corners - Christopher Munch
Coming Soon - Colette Burson
The Dharma Brats: Growing Up Buddhist in America - Bari Pearlman & Jesse Thompson
Fiona - Amos Kollek
A Good Baby - Katherine Dieckmann
The Joyriders - Bruce Battersby
Park Day - Sterling Macer, Jr.
Roberta - Eric Mandelbaum
Sally - David Goldsmith
Spring Forward - Tom Gillroy