Buddhism in Japanese feature film

[David Desser]

The Pacific Film Archive mounted exactly such a series, "Visions of the
Dharma:          Buddhism in Japanese Art and Cinema," in Dec.of 1993.  I
presented a paper in that series on _Ugetsu_.  I'm sure the PFA (U of
California, Berkeley) would have a copy of the program.  More recently,
David James, of USC Cinema, chaired a panel at the Society for Cinema
Studies on "Buddhism and Film."  He is particularly interested in Korean
cinema.  You may also know Linda Ehrlich's piece on the important Korean
film, "Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East."

I think that most people interested in this topic go well beyond the rather
vague "Zen/Orientalist" take that Aaron importantly pointed out.

David Desser


At 1:51 PM 7/6/99, birgit kellner wrote:
>dear list-members,
>
>hoping to exploit the technical possibilities of a new location of our
>university department, i am starting to develop an informal, yet
>academic (or academically framed) programme (i.e. series of screenings
>with a short lecture beforehand and hopefully enthusiastic discussion
>afterwards) around the theme of "buddhism in feature film".
>
>the programme as such is not limited to japanese film (i shall also
>consider in particular recent hollywood representations of buddhism, in
>particular "little buddha", "kundun" and "seven years in tibet", and
>also hopefully get some indian films), but i'll phrase my present
>concerns & questions in view of the specific focus of this mailing-list
>-
>
>(1) are there any studies on the relationship between buddhism (or other
>japanese religions) and japanese cinema, in particular, ones that dwell
>on possibly specific ways in which buddhist iconography, buddhist
>teachings, values that are (or were) conceived of as specifically
>buddhis, artefacts that have become identified with buddhism, or the
>biography of the historical buddha become manifest in japanese films,
>and what approaches could be developed in order to theorize these
>issues?
>(2) in view of the ways that i just mentioned in which buddhism can
>become manifest in feature films, what japanese films would be most
>important, outstanding, relevant, telling, etc.?
>
>i just started thinking about this subject-matter, and have briefly
>browsed some of the pertinent literature on religion in film in general,
>but it seems to me that (as is the case so often with religious studies)
>available literature limits its focus to christianity and thereby
>neglects a lot of things, methodologically as well as content-wise. i
>realize that these are very preliminary questions, but hopefully someone
>on this list will have something to say on this ...
>
>btw, while i am mainly interested in feature films for this particular
>programme, information about documentaries that deal with aspects of
>buddhism would also be greatly appreciated.
>
>best,
>--
>Birgit Kellner
>Institut f. Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde / Institute for Tibetan and
>Buddhist Studies
>Universitaet Wien / Vienna University