THE space Cinema Club are screening Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy, edited by Stroud man Pip Heywood, who will also be introducing the film, this weekend.

The trilogy, which was very well received worldwide on its original release, has been condensed into one film, will soon go into general distribution and has been digitally re-mastered.

"The original three films were completed in 1978," said Pip, "and then played very successfully in art cinemas throughout the world over the following 10 years.

"My friend David Lascelles sold his grandmother's furniture to finance the six-month filming trip, and Graham Coleman, the director, is a Tibetan scholar (his new, complete translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead has just appeared in Penguin).

"The film grows out of a deep and authentic knowledge of its subject - for anyone with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism, this is an important experience."

From a portrait of the Dalai Lama, as a spiritual and temporal leader, to an unprecedented revelation of the mystical inner world of monastic life, and an unflinching depiction of the moving response to death in the community, Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy takes its audience on an intimate journey deep into the heart of an ancient Buddhist culture.

"In making the trilogy," said director Graham Coleman, "we were searching for an immediacy, intimacy and unobtrusiveness which had been so masterfully achieved in such classic documentaries as Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North and the films of Fred Wiseman.

We were trying to allow the Tibetan way of life to speak directly to the audience."

The film is to be shown at The Space, Lansdown, Stroud on Sunday, February 12 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £5 on the door and membership for one calendar year is £2.