Opening Film: 一轮明月
(A Full Bright Moon)(PG) 13th September 4.30pm
Master artist Li Shutong left his comfortable life to become the great Venerable Master Hong Yi. Be inspired by his cultural and spiritual contributions to a tumultous era of Chinese history. Read more
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13th September 7pm Mekong Full Moon Party (PG)
An old friendship between a young man and his temple abbot mirrors the relationship between modernity and religion. Read more
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14th September Monday 7pmDhamma Brothers (PG)
A meditation course to reform dangerous criminals is stopped in its tracks when a local parishioner complains against the program. Read more
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15th September Tuesday 7pm Act Normal (NC16)
The pioneer monk in Iceland renounces his life of celibacy to try out a life of a married, ‘normal’ person. Read more
16th September Wednesday 7pm Zen Buddhism – In Search of Self (PG)
Bhutan – Taking the Middle Path to Happiness(PG)
Two films are bundled into one to give a cross-cultural perspective on the Buddhist search for meaningful living. Read more
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17th September Thursday 7pm Sankara (PG)
A young Sinhalese monk-artist is tempted by his attractions for a young girl. Read more
18th September Friday 7pm Unmistaken Child (PG)
A grieving servant must transform himself into a master in order to look for his teachers’s reincarnation.
Read more
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19th September Saturday 1.30pm Arukihenro – Walking Pilgrims (PG)
A journey of almost a thousand miles is still undertaken by foot when it can easily be done on wheels. Read more
Special Debut: 19th September Saturday 4.30pm Little Note (PG)
This special feature by local director Roysten Tan will be screen before Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame as part of the Closing Film. Please purchase tickets for Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame to view this film. Read more
Closing Film: Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame(PG) 19th September Saturday 4.30pm
A feisty girl in Afghanistan strives for her own educational opportunities in a village where the Taliban destroyed the Bamyan Buddhas. Read more
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Opening Film: 一轮明月(A Full Bright Moon)(PG) 13th September 4.30pm
120min
Language - Mandarin
Subtitles - Mandarin
Awards
第11届中国电影华表奖
优秀故事片
优秀男演员
11th China Cinematography Huabiao Awards
Best Story Film
Best Actor
“Awakened Ones enlighten. Enlightening to the truth, one hence can put aside one’s life and all, striving bravely to save one’s country. Hence to save one’s country, one must practice towards enlightenment.”
Thus was the patriotic spirit of the great Venerable Hong Yi, renowned master of the Virtue school of Buddhism. Born as Li Shutong in the twilight years of the Qing Dynasty, he went on to become a master poet, artist, dramatist and composer, and taught many outstanding art students who became masters of their own. Follow on a journey of Venerable Hong Yi’s life through the early years of modern China, from his life as a layman, an art student in Japan, a controversial art teacher pushing the limits of conservatism in society, to eventually becoming a Buddhist master advocating humble, upright conduct, simple, grateful living, and service to the common people and country. One of the great compositions left to future generations is the master’s collaboration with Grandmaster Taixu called “Ode to the Triple Gems”, sung today in Chinese communities all over the world in children’s Buddhist classes.
Special Debut: Little Note(PG)
19th September Saturday 4.30pm
Living with little wants in the countryside, Zhiren and his mother expressed their love and support for each other in a simple way - by exchanging little notes. These words
of encouragement spurred their every step forward in life, helping them cast aside fear
and despair in times of uncertainty.
Interweaving poetic cinematography, intricate scenes of mother-and-son intimacy and
a heartfelt original score, Little Note will meander its way into your heart like a clear,
pristine stream.
Written and directed by Royston Tan, Little Note stars Chue En Jye, Desmond Tan (finalist of Star Search 2007) and child actor Chen Jing Jun.
Please purchase tickets for Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame to view this film.
Closing Film: Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (PG) 19th September Saturday 4.30pm
84min
Language - Persian
Subtitles - English
Awards
2008 Berlin International Film Festival
Crystal Bear – Best Feature Film.
Peace Film Award
2007 San Sebastian International Film Festival
Special Prize of the Jury
TVE Otra Mirada Award
In the village of Bamiyan in Afghanistan where the Taliban destroyed the two giant Buddha statues in 2001, there lives a little little girl who envies her neighbour, the boy next door who goes to school. With a heart of a lion and an entrepreneurial spirit, she sets off to earn herself the proper stationery and a place at school.
Sadly, rejected by social norms, and the very teacher she wishes to learn form, she learns the hard way of a woman’s place in society. Worse still, our heroine gets ambushed by a band of boys play-acting the Taliban. What will they do to her and her notebook? The empty sites where the Buddhas once stood watches in silence
13th September Sunday 7pm Mekhong Full Moon Party (PG)
119min
Language - Thai
Subtitles - English
Awards
2004 Silver Lake Film Festival
Best Foreign Film
2003 Bangkok International Film Festival
ASEAN Competition
2003 Hong Kong International Film Festival
FIPRESCI Award
2002 Thailand National Film Awards
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Screenplay
Best Actor
Directed by Jira Maligool. Starring Anuchit Sapanpong and Noppadol Duangporn.
Along the Mekhong River in Northeast Thailand, there exists a strange phenomenon. After sunset on the full moon day of the eleventh month, mysterious balls of fire rise up from the great river and disappear into the sky. The locals attribute it to the naga of traditional Buddhist mythology, a dragon making an offering to the Buddha. So wondrous is this phenomenon that it has become a tourist attraction. But it also attracts attention of other sorts: one academic is trying to prove that it is a hoax, while another believes that it is natural and not supernatural.
Khan, a Nong Khai native who now attends university at Bangkok, arrives home for the festival. The abbot at the local temple, Luang Poh Loh, asks him for a favour to do something he has helped with since young: to plant the fireballs on the river bed. But Khan has grown up now; he no longer wishes to perpetuate superstition. But in doing so, will he jeopardise the local celebrations this year?
14th September Monday 7pm Dhamma Brothers(PG)
76min
Language - English
Subtitles - English
Awards
2007 Wood Hole Film Festival
Best Documentary
2007 National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Pass Award
2007 Rhode Island International Film Festival
Runner-up, Best Documentary
The Donaldson Correction Facility is a maximum security prison in Alabama, a state along the United States’ so-called ‘Bible Belt’. In this prison are some of the most dangerous criminals of the state, men convicted for murder, manslaughter, gang activities, shootings and stabbings. And yet, horrendous crimes they may have committed, some of them yearn for emotional and social change. In 2002, their opportunity came in the form of a meditation course and Vipassana meditation retreat that was introduced in hope of offering inner peace and genuine rehabilitation for these men. Such a program was unheard of in the West, and even the participants of the course were partially cynical about it. As one of them put it, “I’ve been through every course imaginable. A meditation course? C’mon!”
For 10 days, the men faced their inner personal traumas, and the program was a resounding success. Unfortunately, complaints by the locals that the prisoners "were being turned into Buddhists” caused the program to be shut down. With the change in prison administration at the end of 2005, the meditation course was reintroduced. The participants of the previous course were interviewed, and to the surprise of the interviewers…
A British boy’s plan to seek guidance in Thailand on Buddhism and stay for three months led to sixteen years of monkhood. Upon an invitation to Iceland, he came across a community of Buddhist immigrants, and applied to stay as serve their religious needs. Hence Robert Edison aka. Dhammanando became the first Buddhist monk in Iceland.
The life of this pioneer venerable takes an unexpected twist. Dhammanando started to wonder if he had missed out on life by being ordained so early in life, and soon disrobed to marry an almost total stranger! This documentary follows the real story of this monk, and how it eventually took another turn, again…
16th September Wednesday 7pm Zen – In Search of Self (PG)
65min
Language - Korean
Subtitles - English
Directed by Gong Jae Sung.
Following a tradition dating back over a thousand years, two dozen Buddhist nuns gather for a ninety day period of meditation, fasting and contemplation deep in the mountains of South Korea. With the singular goal of attaining enlightenment, the nuns undertake a rigorous schedule of meditation, at one point sitting for seven days without sleep. In this is the first ever documentary on the Dong Ahn Geo or Winter Zen retreat, you will witness not only the nuns’ strict meditation practice, but their daily lives in which we see not only a deep spiritual discipline, but also an almost childlike joy and simplicity.
Since the great monk and master Hyecheol built Baek Hung temple in the tenth century during the Silla dynasty (AD57-935), the temple has been known for the most rigorous Cham Sun practice. Forbidden until now, the camera captures the austere beauty of the Korean countryside and the long secret traditions of this Zen Buddhist retreat.
Where did I come from? Where am I going to?
Came with the cloud, Going with the wind.
Then, what is this That is coming and going?
Bhutan – Taking the Middle Path to Happiness (PG)
57min
Language - English
Subtitles - English
Awards
2000 Crested Butte Reel Fest
Gold Illumination Award
Silver Award (Documentary)
1998 San Francisco International Film Festival
Goldern Spire
Imagine a country where happiness is the guiding principal of government. Imagine a people who see all life as sacred and the source of their happiness, a place with an abundance of clean and renewable energy, a nation committed to preserving its culture. Where is this Shangri-La?
Bhutan.
But can a place like Bhutan really exist? Can such ideals be realized? Can this small, geographically isolated country tucked away in the Himalayans truly protect its environment and culture as they open their doors to the Modernity?
17th September Thursday 7pm Sankara (PG)
87min
Language - Sinhalese
Awards
2006 Cairo International Film Festival
The Silver Pyramid – Special Jury Prize
2006 International Film Festival of Kerala
Best Debut Director
Netpac Award
Director by Prasanna Jayakody. Starring Thumindhu Dodantenne, Sachini ayendra Stanley, K.A. Milton Perera and Nilupa Heenkendaarachchi.
A young, handsome monk is tasked to restore the fading frescoes of a Sinhalese village temple. The paintings depict the Thelapaththa Jathakaya, with hypersexualized female figures. Amorous feelings are awakened in the monk when he catches the notice of a pretty village girl.
One day, he picks up a hair pin belonging to the girl, and in his attempt to return it to the owner, his repressed, inner spiritual world is plunged into turmoil. His struggle is about to come to an end when his reparation works have been completed. But the next morning, he wakes up to find his painstaking work destroyed!
Devoted disciple Tenzin Zopa was bereft and lonely when his teacher and master of twenty-one years, the great Tibetan master Geshe Lama Konchog, passed away in 2001 at the age of eighty-four. The Dalai Lama tasks him to look for the reincarnation of the great Lama, and the quest must be completed within four years, before it becomes too difficult to remove him from his parents' care.
This amazing story is portrayed through Tenzin’s eyes, as he searches through remote Tibetan villages in the beautiful mountains, travelling by helicopter, mule and foot, assisted by astrology, dreams and whispers of villagers. Will he find the little boy who would respond to his master’s rosary beads? In the process, the servant Tenzin transforms into a spiritual leader, and then to become a servant again.
The ’88 Temples’ Pilgrimage’ connects 88 temples along a 1400km route that circles the fourth largest island of Japan, Shikoku. This pilgrimage follows on the path of the founder of Japanese Shingon sect of Buddhism, Kobo Daishi (AD774-835), who is said to have attained enlightenment on his ascetic wanderings through the prefectures of Tokushima, Kochi, Ehime and Kagaw.
In the increasing secularized Japanses society, this pilgrimage still retains its popularity, although the overwhelming majority choose to take it via bus and taxi tours. Using ethnographic methods, this film investigates the motivations of the few walkers who still choose to undertake the entire pilgrimage in 40 to 60 days on foot. From youth at loose sens in Japan’s changing economy to elderly people for whom walking the pilgrimage has been a lifelong dream, these pilgrims walk for a variety of reasons, but all find a common ground in the soothing rituals of pilgrimage.
