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[sabaijai]

Bakuteh, on 2007-03-23 09:20:27, said:

sabaijai, on 2007-03-22 17:41:25, said:

I watched Act Normal last night, very interesting film documentary that follows the tale of a British man who ordains as a Theravada Buddhist monk at an early age, first for two years in the UK, then 10 years in Thailand. He is then invited to administer to the Thai community in Iceland, thus becoming the first Buddhist monk ever to reside in Iceland. He stays there two years, if I remember correctly (his first stint as a monks lasts 16 years total), before leaving the monkhood to get a taste of 'normal' life as a married man. After working as a security guard in Iceland for awhile, the man leaves his wife and returns to the monkhood.

The director filmed the man's story over a 10-year period that covers his residence in Thailand and Iceland, the dissolution of the marriage and his return to robes. It's directed in a very interesting way, attempting (if I may interpret the director's intentions) to evoke the idea that both the 'normal' life and the monk's life are equally dream-like. Along the way we get a fair amount of Buddhist philosophy, blended with humour, and one man's ruminations on the illusory nature of romantic love.

Any chance of purchasing a video of Act Normal in Thailand, or perhaps even in Chiangmai? My appetite has been whetted...

I haven't seen it for sale anywhere here. The director, Olaf Le Fleur, sent me a licensed DVD. Perhaps I should donate it to a worthy DVD library in Chiang Mai, any suggestions? AUA?

[Bakuteh]

sabaijai, on 2007-03-23 20:21:23, said:

Bakuteh, on 2007-03-23 09:20:27, said:

sabaijai, on 2007-03-22 17:41:25, said:

I watched Act Normal last night, very interesting film documentary that follows the tale of a British man who ordains as a Theravada Buddhist monk at an early age, first for two years in the UK, then 10 years in Thailand. He is then invited to administer to the Thai community in Iceland, thus becoming the first Buddhist monk ever to reside in Iceland. He stays there two years, if I remember correctly (his first stint as a monks lasts 16 years total), before leaving the monkhood to get a taste of 'normal' life as a married man. After working as a security guard in Iceland for awhile, the man leaves his wife and returns to the monkhood.

The director filmed the man's story over a 10-year period that covers his residence in Thailand and Iceland, the dissolution of the marriage and his return to robes. It's directed in a very interesting way, attempting (if I may interpret the director's intentions) to evoke the idea that both the 'normal' life and the monk's life are equally dream-like. Along the way we get a fair amount of Buddhist philosophy, blended with humour, and one man's ruminations on the illusory nature of romantic love.

Any chance of purchasing a video of Act Normal in Thailand, or perhaps even in Chiangmai? My appetite has been whetted...

I haven't seen it for sale anywhere here. The director, Olaf Le Fleur, sent me a licensed DVD. Perhaps I should donate it to a worthy DVD library in Chiang Mai, any suggestions? AUA?

Great idea. AUA would be the best place to benefit the most number of English speaking Buddhists or movie enthusiasts. The gift of the Dhamma (albeit in the form of film drama) is the best gift ever!

[camerata]

jazzbo, on 2007-02-24 12:47:16, said:

Beautifully shot throughout India, Kim is a heart-filled adventure for the entire family."

BTW Buddhists are allowed to have fun.

Having recently read Kim and The Search for Kim, I ordered both DVD versions of the movie from cdwow.com. For fun I think I preferred the 1951 version, even though it had some Hollywood cornball and the entire Himalayan sequence was changed to give Errol Flynn a bigger part and accommodate the young age of the actor playing Kim. The villains are really villanous in this one.

The 1984 version sticks more closely to the book, is longer and more realistic. Kim is played by an older Indian actor who seems a bit mature for the early scenes but is perfect for the Himalayan scenes. Bryan Brown looks the part of an Afghan horse-trader whereas Flynn looks more like an Arabian prince.

Neither movie makes any effort to make the lama appear oriental. In the earlier version he's played with quiet dignity, but wears a hat that makes him look like a cross between Friar Tuck and Little John. Peter O'Toole's lama stands out more with his yellow robes, bald head and scraggly grey hair but he plays the character with no dignity, like a staggering old duffer who's escaped from the old folks' home. And his portrayal of the lama's enlightenment is like someone experiencing the onset of an epileptic fit!

With so many excellent Asian actors in movies these days, not to mention real lamas and tulkus, it's truly bizarre watching a farang play an Asian. Not just the looks, but they don't walk the same, don't move the same, and don't have the necessary reserved demeanour. Well, OK, David Carradine excepted.  

I enjoyed both versions of Kim but it's a difficult one to film and the book worked better for me.

[sutnyod]

andyinkat, on 2004-07-07 20:42:52, said:

Kundun
This is a very authentic portrayal of Tibetan Buddhism, but it makes no concession to an audience who have no background - it would I guess be a bit esoteric and impressionistic (I do have the 'background' so I can't put myself in those shoes) but very powerful for that.

Hi andyinkat,

finally got a copy of Kundun recently and watched it. Now I am glad there is someone with more background than me. There are so many questions:
1. Why this episode with the regent? I would have preferred to expand the sequence with the walking stick instead.
2. What do the twigs in the chimneys mean?
3. Why so many performances by the oracle? I understand he rarely is consulted. From the film one could think they had seesions every other week.  

Apropos oracle: there is another film around that I am looking for: the state oracle of tibet

[sabaijai]

Buddha's Lost Children, about Thai Buddhism, was screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival recently.

More info:

http://newportbeach....filmId=16701886

http://www.buddhaslo...20Children.html

from the NBFF press:

Quote

Stunning cinematography, intimate filmmaking and a compelling story make this film an extraordinary experience of a hidden realm. The term 'grassroots Buddhism' gains a new meaning, and through the eyes of small children we share in their amazing true journey when they transform from neglected village boys to self-confident novices. Filmed over the course of a year on location in Thailand this film is an amazing true story of compassion and tough love. Thai with English subtitles.

Festival awards (from the production website:

Quote

Buddha’s Lost Children wins the top documentary prize at the AFI Festival in Los Angeles receiving the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. The film also was awarded the City of Rome prize, at the Asiaticafilmediale in Rome and a Silver Dove at DOK Leipzig: 'For this extraordinary real-life adventure that recounts a superb tale of a heroic undertaking to create a better world, and all this brought to the screen with a breathtaking cinematic sensibility.' Jury report

Buddha's Lost Children was also awarded the Crystal Film prize, at The Netherlands Film Festival for reaching an audience of 10,000 in its first 15 days of release.

At the Vancouver International Film Festival 2006, Buddha’s Lost Children was a runner up in the People's Choice Award for most popular film, and was nominated for The National Film
Board Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The film also screened to great popular acclaim in the ‘Highlights of the Lowlands’ section of the recent International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA).

[fabianfred]

'Groundhog Day' has sometimes been reffered to as having a good theme similar to Buddhist thought..... keep coming back until the lessons are learned

I always shudder when I think of the Title to 'The Little Buddha' although I like the movie....... it should have been...'the Little Lama'

the subject of the movie 'Act Normal' is a regular poster at the 'E-Sangha' website forums.... http://www.e-sangha.com/

I also liked 'The Golden Child'... but why do many of these have to start with a massacre of monks....'The Bullet proof monk' did too

[fabianfred]

I watched the 'spring,summer,fall,winter....spring'  one yesterday...
Mahayana in Korea is obviously very different to Theravada here..... the guy has sex whilst a monk... disrobes... then comes back as a monk
don't they have Paraccika offences then? Here he wouldn't be able to re-ordain.

They like their little doorways.... but you can just walk around the sides...odd! ...like in his bedroom??  like setting-up a doorframe in the middle of a field.... and only allowing yourself to go through it... not around....!!

nice setting though.... the hut floating in the middle of the lake... nice retreat place

[camerata]

The Mindful Way is a 20-minute documentary about Buddhism in Thailand, but in particular at Ajahn Chah's monastery. Contains a short interview with Ajahn Chah himself. This video clip is on Google Video so it can be viewed in Thailand.

[mtls2005]

I always got a kick out of Ang Lee's effort in the BMW "The Hire" series, with Clive Owen as The Driver, called Chosen. Lee cast his son, Mason, as the Passenger.

[lomatopo]

The Sri Lankan film, Sankara is playing at the 2007 Bangkok International Film Festival.

24 July 2007: 12:00 Sankara (85') (C 2006 / Sri Lanka / Feature / Colour / 35mm / Thai & Eng Sub.

26 July 2007: 17:40 Sankara (85') (C 2006 / Sri Lanka / Feature / Colour / 35mm / Thai & Eng Sub.

SF World Cinema #6

[wotaplonker]

Mr. Farang, on 2005-09-19 12:26:36, said:

I thought "The Matrix" (the first one) was a pretty good movie about Buddhism :-)

eh! just shows how we see things sometimes quite differently. i thought it was about christianity, great film. the two follow ups perhaps the most disappointing of all time

[thaibebop]

Does this thread include documentaries? Like Cave In The Snow?

[sabaijai]

thaibebop, on 2007-08-07 03:42:51, said:

Does this thread include documentaries? Like Cave In The Snow?

Sure

[sabaijai]

Movie Review - Cave In The Snow

Nun fights gender bias in Buddhism  
  
August 24, 2007

By Jayne Mayne

Rating: ***
Directed by Liz Thompson, with Tenzin Palmo.

It's no secret that throughout history, women's disempowerment has taken many forms.

Within patriarchal culture, access to knowledge has been a primary area where women have come off second best.

In the light of skewed gender dynamics this comes as no surprise, but not many people stop to consider that a respected spiritual tradition such as Buddhism, would apply discriminatory politicking in the delivery of their teachings.

Despite age-old tradition, British-born Tenzin Palmo is questioning this boys-club mentality, and Liz Thompson's Cave in the Snow follows her journey to raise the educational status of nuns within Tibetan Buddhism.

After meeting her guru in India in 1964, Palmo was ordained as one of the first western Tibetan Buddhist nuns.

Her search for perfection saw her isolate herself for 12 years in a remote Himalayan cave.

Here she studied classical Tibetan texts which described complex meditation techniques.

A tenacious student, she faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, near-starvation and avalanches. She grew her own food, and slept in a wooden meditation box, never lying down. Her goal being to gain enlightenment as a woman.

After this epic retreat, Palmo saw that other nuns had little opportunity for deeper study and practice, as many simply became servants for monks  
.

Her reaction was a vision to build a convent in northern India dedicated to helping women achieve spiritual excellence.

Cave in the Snow is a story of courage and phenomenal persistence.

It is an intimate portrayal of one woman's endeavour to make a difference.

Thompson's film doesn't relay the essence of Buddhist philosophy, or explore profound truths, rather the focus is firmly on Palmo's personal journey and her efforts to bring about change.

The 52-minute documentary features interviews with Palmo herself, a brief sitting with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and snippets of India.

Palmo is now based at Tashi Jong, Northern India, where she and her helpers have raised enough money to build the nunnery.

There she teaches that mindfulness can be interpreted in two ways: "Concentration, which is narrow and laser-like, or awareness, which is more panoramic."

Traditionally, women are trained to be the void that needs filling, the absence that needs presence.

So for many, it would seem at odds that a woman would actively seek to "go within".

Yet Palmo is intent on facilitating women's passage to attain enlightenment.

Source: Tonight

[sabaijai]

Buddha Wild: Monk in a Hut

http://www.buddhawil.../v20/index.html

This unpretentious small feel good movie provides the opportunity for a group of strict missionary monks to talk about their lives and also celebrate the joy in Asian temple life and Asian culture.

"Now that everywhere you go there’s someone taking a picture or shooting video, it seems the world has become one big scrapbook, with everybody tearing out moments to save for later amid their own tattered recollections and reflections. While increased access to the tools of artistic practice certainly doesn’t make everyone an artist, it does heighten the ability of people to participate, to express their own moments of inspiration. Buddha Wild: Monk in a Hut is an example of something that’s not quite a home movie, but not exactly a professional production either. New Zealand–born actress Anna Wilding spent time traveling Sri Lanka and Thailand, meeting with Buddhist monks and a few Anglo expatriates to explore the tenets of Buddhism and the day-to-day lives of the monks. She gained access to areas of certain Buddhist temples that had never before been captured on film, including a rather cute “date” with a monk (who takes vows of celibacy) inside his modest hut. Wilding’s genuine curiosity about the monks’ beliefs and daily routines, as well as her willingness to ask questions that sometimes make her look like a bit of a dip, gives the film a homespun honesty and sincerity that make it a surprisingly pleasant trip." -- LA Weekly

[bankei]

fabianfred, on 2007-06-11 12:17:31, said:

I watched the 'spring,summer,fall,winter....spring'  one yesterday...
Mahayana in Korea is obviously very different to Theravada here..... the guy has sex whilst a monk... disrobes... then comes back as a monk
don't they have Paraccika offences then? Here he wouldn't be able to re-ordain.

They have the same 4 Parajika rules in the (2) Vinayas used by 'Mahayana' monks. A monk having sex is no longer a monk and cannot re-ordain. But remember this is just a movie however these things obviously do happen, with the monk keeping it a secret.

[sabaijai]

Dhammatube:

http://video.google....793080622139734

Dhammatube stands for the idea to share short clips of Dhamma-teachings through the internet. Usually these teachings are less than three minutes long so that they can be used before or after work and in breaks to realign the mind, with teachings that one can choose from famous as well as hardly known teachers.

These clips can be played on the computer or easily copied on portable video devices (such as iPods) for use while waiting or being on the road. They can also be easily shown to other people in this way.

Anybody can upload clips of their teachers, so that there could be easily dozens or even hundreds of teachers in there once the project is fully underway.

All these videos in YouTube are uploaded automatically from Veoh.com. You can find us there by using "dhammatube" as the key word in the channel search box. The same clips are also present in Google Video.

For further inquiries please contact us at dhammatube-AT-gmail-DOT-com.
Country: United States
Website: http://dhammatube.googlepages.com

[camerata]

Amongst White Clouds looks interesting.

"An intimate insider's look at the reclusive Buddhist masters living in scattered retreats dotting China's Zhongnan mountain range. These peaks have reputedly been home to reclusive monks since the time of the Yellow Emperor, some five thousand years ago. It was widely thought that the tradition was all but wiped out, but this remarkable film emphatically and beautifully shows otherwise."

[sabaijai]

How to Cook Your Life


Zen priest gives bread-making its rise.

By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

"How to Cook Your Life" is an unexpectedly charming and enlightening film, a documentary that makes the most of the intersection of Zen Buddhism and cooking in the life of Edward Espe Brown.

A Zen priest and chef, Brown is best known as the author of 1970's landmark "The Tassajara Bread Book," a volume that introduced an entire generation to the joys of baking. German director Doris Dörrie took a cooking class from Brown and was captivated enough to want to film his thoughts on connecting the way you cook food with the way you live your life. It was an inspired idea. For besides being an artist with bread, Brown turns out to be a great raconteur with a puckish sense of humor and a sly look in his eye who couldn't be more of a treat to hang out with.

Most of the time.

Neither the director nor Brown shies away from the chef's temper and his other foibles. Shown beginning a class in Austria, he confesses to being "a little excited and a little anxious. 'You've been doing Zen for 40 years and you're anxious, what's your problem?' I'm a human being."

This pleasing candor is a hallmark of Brown, who dates his interest in homemade bread to a visit to an aunt when he was 10. "I wondered, 'What's happened in our culture, what went wrong, that we are eating this manufactured bread?' "

Brown studied Zen under Suzuki Roshi, shown in archival footage, who was a founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and one of the key figures in introducing the practice to this country. When Brown became a chef, Roshi's advice was, " 'When you wash the rice, wash the rice.' Don't go through the motions, don't have stuff on your mind."

These kinds of thoughts recur frequently in Brown's cooking talks. He laments our disconnection from the physical world, the way we "give away our capacity to do things with our hands and our bodies that make us feel human." In cooking, "hands get to be hands, to do something."

Brown's great ability to impart teachings while talking about food means that when the film wanders away from him, as it does from time to time, you wish it wouldn't. He's that engaging a presence, and this lively, thoughtful film shows us why.

"How to Cook Your Life." MPAA rating: PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

[camerata]

Ajahn Chah's biography is now available on YouTube, narrated by Ajahn Jayasaro - all four hours of it.

"In this series Tan Ajahn Jayasaro tells the life story of Ajahn Cha. Ajahn Jayasaro has researched Ajahn Cha's life for many years and authored an influential , 'official' biography of Ajahn Cha in Thai on request of Thai senior monks which, however, has never been translated into English.
These informal recordings at his hermitage attempt to provide some insights into the origins and development of one of the most influential Buddhist meditation masters of the 20th century who continues to affect the lives of meditators around the world.
We will keep adding clips to this series until April 2008."

[IMChris]

I found a great DVD Thai comedy called "The Holy Man" it also has english sub titles.

Edited by IMChris, 2008-02-21 02:09:46.

[chutai]

I stumbled upon this page today:

"Welcome to the newly introduced DharmaFlix video wiki. DharmaFlix is a collaborative effort to list, review, rate, and provide clips of films with Buddhist Dharma content for the benefit of all."

http://www.dharmafli...x.com_Main_Page

[seonai]

Brilliant Chutai, thanks

[sabaijai]

Dhamma Brothers
(2008)
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 76 mins
Theatrical Release: Apr 11, 2008 Limited

Synopsis:

East meets West in the Deep South. An overcrowded maximum-security prison—the end of the line in Alabama’s correctional system—is forever changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program. Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence dwells a... [More]

East meets West in the Deep South. An overcrowded maximum-security prison—the end of the line in Alabama’s correctional system—is forever changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program. Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark is ignited when it becomes the first maximum-security prison in North America to hold an extended Vipassana retreat, an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting ten days. This film, with the power to dismantle stereotypes about men behind prison bars also, in the words of Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking), “gives you hope for the human race."

more at http://www.rottentom...thers/#synopsis

[sabaijai]

Keanu Reeves speaks about his experiences filming Little Buddha