Lord of the Universe

Lord of the Universe
1991 VHS edition
Directed by
Produced by
  • David Loxton
  • Top Value Television
Edited by
  • John. J. Godfrey
  • Wendy Appel
Production
company
Top Value Television
Distributed byPBS
Release dates
  • February 2, 1974 (1974-02-02) (PBS)
  • November 1, 1991 (1991-11-01) (VHS)
Running time
58 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
BudgetUS$30,000[1]

Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat (at the time known as Guru Maharaj Ji) at an event in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome called "Millennium '73". Lord of the Universe 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 production team of Top Value Television produced the documentary, using Portapak video cameras. The TVTV team followed Maharaj Ji across the United States over a period of six weeks, and edited a large amount of tape down to the fifty-eight-minute piece. It was the first documentary made on 12 in (13 mm) video tape broadcast nationally, and also the first independent video documentary shown on national public television.

The documentary was generally well-received, and garnered its TVTV production team the 1974 Alfred I. du Pont/Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism. The documentary 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. The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote that the TVTV team had improved since their previous work but wanted them to move on to more challenging subjects.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference video history project was invoked but never defined (see the help page).