Buddha's teachings

New Delhi, July 17: It is the 2550th anniversary of the birth of the Buddha and what better occasion to present before a discerning audience the essence of the life and teachings of one of the greatest visionaries the world has seen.

As a homage to the Gautam Buddha, the eighth Asian film festival, which began in the capital on July 15, is screening a series of films inspired by his life and message.

Screened as part of the special section on Buddha titled 'The Middle Path: a Focus on Buddhism', which opened yesterday with Rinpoche Neten Chokling's 'Milarepa', will be a dozen films from India, Switzerland, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, Bhutan, UK, France and the US.

Films like Neten Chokling Rinpoche, Sudipto Sen's 'The Last Monk', Bernado Bertolucci's 'Little Buddha', Franz Osten's 'The Light of Asia', Ho Quang Minh's 'Gone Gone Forever Gone', Nabendu Ghosh's 'Trishagni', Im Kwan Taek's 'Come, Come, Come Upward' and Conrad Rook's 'Siddhartha' will feature in the section.

The opening film in the section, Neten Chokling Rinpoche's 'Milarepa', which was screened at the Siri Fort yesterday, is a story of 'Milarepa, the 11th-12th Century poet-monk and mystic from Tibet who rose above the misery and violence around him to become a great visionary.

It is a tale of greed, revenge, demons, magic, murder and redemption. Before becoming the poet-monk, Milarepa was simply known as Thopaga. As Thopaga, he suffered humiliation and defeat at the hands of his uncle, leading his mother to use him as an instrument of revenge. Milarepa's youthful rage and black magic brought death and destruction upon his own family. He had to experience this cycle of ruthlessness before experiencing the essence of Buddha's teachings and becoming a visionary.

Widely diverse in subject matter, emphasis and motivation, the films being screened in the section cover a gamut of human emotions and circumstances. They are as much about personal journeys as about war;they speak of love and fulfilment; of pain and the temptations of the flesh. They trace paths that move towards wisdom even as they look back on the detritus of violence.

For example, Ho Quang Minh's 'Gone, Gone, Forever Gone'(1996) captures the mood of the Vietnam war and things past in a unique way while 'The Burmese Harp' (1956) by the japanese master Kon Ichikawa portrays the carnage of battle and transformation of a soldier who refused to return to base and evoted himself to burying the dead.

'Trishagni' (1988) by Nabendu Ghosh deals with monkhood and seduction, banishment and repentence amid swirls of desert sands. On a different note, 'Angry Monk-Reflections on Tibet' describes the life of Gendun Choephel, a free spirit and a non-conformist monk who became a symbol of hope for a free Tibet, yet remained a wanderer between two worlds.

Also screened at the festival will be Franz Osten's 'The Light of Asia' (1925), one of the earliest films to speak of Buddhism, shows an old man recounting the life of Buddha to a group of tourists in Bombay. Directed by German filmmaker Franz Osten, 'Light of Asia', which stars Himansu Ray and Seeta Devi, reflects the romantic appeal of Indian mysticism to Germans in the early 20th century. The company that Osten formed to make the film eventually evolved into Bombay talkies - one of the largest colonial era film studios in India.

A unique feature of all the films focussing on Buddhism at the Asian film festival is the fact that they are devoid of dogma;they renounce the didactic; they do not abjure human frailities and have their characters confront life head on, then turn inwards as natural as a pilgrim.

In short, they show that cinema and spiritual can make an excellent blend.

UNI