Buddhist films and discussion for the Tricycle community
Watch as a group of dedicated Tibetan Buddhist monks at Namgyal monastery in upstate New York work day and night to build an elaborate Kalachakra [“wheel of time”] sand mandala, only to dismantle it as part of the final ceremonial offering.
An award-winning independent filmmaker and scholar of religions turns her camera to a community of Chinese Buddhist nuns on pilgrimage in the Canadian Rockies.
This humorous short documentary, directed by a Buddhist neuroscientist and experimental psychologist, captures people’s responses to illusory 3D worlds as they try out virtual reality for the first time.
Shot on-site at a 118-year-old nunnery on the banks of Myanmar’s Irrawaddy River, this short film takes an unprecedented look into the daily grind of pink and saffron-robed Buddhist nuns, ranging from age seven to seventy, who have found refuge, education, and friendship amid external hardships.
Cursed with a green left eye that sees only the past and a brown right eye that glimpses only the future, Little Vaysha is split between two worlds. Adapted from a story by the Bulgarian playwright Georgi Gospodinov, this presentation of the parable of Vaysha is an Oscar-contender for best animated short—one that speaks volumes about our difficulty to live in the present.
This month at Tricycle, we’re featuring five short films from around the world that you won’t find anywhere else. Among the cinematic journeys in store, we’ll trail a group of Chinese Buddhist nuns on pilgrimage in the Canadian Rockies, watch people try out virtual reality for the first time, and reflect on the difficulty of living in the present moment with Little Vaysha, a young girl with a double-edged gift.
Every 20 years, locals tear down Ise Jingu, one of the most important Shinto shrine complexes in Mie Prefecture, Japan, only to rebuild it entirely from scratch. Acclaimed Japanese photographer Masaaki Miyazawa explores this 1,300-year-old ritual in his debut feature. Miyazawa takes viewers on a meditative journey through Japan’s cypress forests, mountains, and coasts, where coexisting with the natural world is part of enduring Buddhist environmentalism.
In Mickey Lemle’s new award-winning documentary, The Last Dalai Lama?, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, takes a look at his legacy as he enters the ninth decade of his life. Rather than presenting a linear story, the film offers an endearing, candid portrait of the Tibetan leader’s life by weaving together historical photos, rare interviews with an all-star cast—including Thupten Jinpa, Matthieu Ricard, and Daniel Goleman—and archival footage from Lemle’s 1992 biopic, Compassion in Exile.
Documentarian Tin Win Naing has made great sacrifices to oppose social injustice. In 2009, two years after filming political footage during Myanmar’s Saffron Revolution, the political dissident was forced to flee his homeland, leaving his wife, children, and friends to seek asylum in neighboring Thailand. Naing’s award-winning documentary, inspired by his own experiences of hardship and persecution, chronicles the lives of Burmese migrant workers who struggle to keep their morale and livelihood amid the grueling working conditions on the Thai plantations where they eke out a living.
Teenage brother and sister Gyembo and Tashi belong to a family that has cared for a Buddhist temple in the Bhutanese mountains for more than a thousand years. With the family legacy weighing heavily on his shoulders, Gyembo is torn between his own aspirations and his father’s wish that he commit to monasticism. Meanwhile, Tashi struggles to find her way as an athletic girl in a culture with rigid views of gender. The siblings must rely on each other as they—and the country they call home—navigate painful questions of identity and modernity in a globalizing world.
The story of Tibetan Buddhism’s emergence in the West cannot be told without acknowledging the life of the late Chöje Akong Tulku Rinpoche (1939–2013). In 1959, when tensions between China and Tibet came to a head, 19-year-old Akong Rinpoche, his close friend Chögyam Trungpa, and 200 other Tibetans embarked on foot on a dangerous journey to northern India. With historical footage—including scenes from this 10-month trek across the Himalayas—and recent interviews, this documentary celebrates Akong Rinpoche’s lifelong commitment to share the Buddhist teachings with many thousands around the world.
In October 1976, thousands of student activists at Thammasat University in Bangkok were attacked by Thai state forces while protesting the return of a former military dictator. By the Time It Gets Dark examines this brutal incident by mixing flashbacks, interviews with former demonstrators, and restaged events. The narrative breaks down as the film progresses, presenting a fragmented, multilayered story that underscores the capricious nature of memory.
Inspired by the history of the Dalits, or “untouchables,” in India, János Orsós, a schoolteacher and Buddhist of Romani descent, founded a secondary school in a village in eastern Hungary to help Romani teenagers—whose people have been victims of racist stereotyping and violence for centuries—attend universities.
During World War II, more than 200,000 young women in Korea, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia were kidnapped and coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Some 70 years later, three “grandmothers” summon the courage to tell their stories despite decades of silence and shame.
Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing turns to the war-torn northeastern border of Myanmar in Ta’ang, a documentary that follows villagers of the Ta’ang ethnic minority as they flee to China, escaping an escalating civil war. In two refugee camps, some of the displaced attempt to create reasonably safe living conditions; others go deeper into China searching for work in sugarcane fields. Ta’ang captures the constant insecurity, instability, and disorientation that come with life as a refugee as well as the complexities—and emotional toll—of the choices Ta’ang families face.
In Zhang Yang’s latest film, a surrealist take on the classic hero’s journey, Tabei, a murderer’s son, is on the run from two brothers seeking vengeance for their father’s death. After Tabei discovers a magical stone in the mouth of a deer he killed on a hunt, the fugitive cowboy encounters a lama, who tasks him with bringing the stone to a holy mountain as an act of penance. Adapted from novels by the Tibetan author Tashi Dawa, Soul on a String is an epic tale of karma, revenge, and self-discovery set against the backdrop of Tibet’s rolling steppes and scorching deserts.
Twenty-five-year-old Burmese punk musician Kyaw Kyaw is on a mission. He and his band, The Rebel Riot, travel Myanmar playing music and organizing demonstrations to raise awareness about the persecution of the country’s ethnic minorities. The band’s unique blend of ideals—one part Buddhist compassion, two parts punk rock rebellion—fuels their quest for equality and freedom for all in contemporary Myanmar.
Seven-year-old Chandra is excited to visit his mother and newborn sibling but to his grandfather, it’s a different story as they journey on foot through earthquake-hit Kathmandu.
Living under the Himalayan sun, Manisara and Durga’s eyes have slowly gone milky white. They have cataracts and their mountain home in Nepal has become a warren of darkness. Filmed over three days, Open Your Eyes follows their life-changing journey to see again.
In 2015 an earthquake shook the mountains of the Langtang Valley, Nepal, causing landslides and avalanches taking hundreds of lives from the small community. A year later Nima Gyalmu, a woman of strength, dignity, and humor rebuilds her home and business—a tea house—in this remote and shattered place, while trying to come to terms with her new world in the heart of the Himalayas.
The painter Rahula lives a modest but contented existence with his family in Mingun, a village on the banks of the Irrawaddy River, upriver from Mandalay. As a new work takes shape on a canvas in his studio next door to the towering base of Mingun’s famously unfinished brick pagoda, we learn how this easy-going artist has managed to survive Myanmar’s checkered history.
January is for film-lovers. This month at Tricycle, we’ll be showing five short films from around the Buddhist world.
Amidst political transition and the national elections in Nepal, the life of Bijuli, a 12-year-old girl in the remote west of Nepal, will change forever.
Without equanimity, we can engage to an extent that we burn out or get lost in the situation we’re trying to help. Without fierce compassion, we won’t have the strength to stand up to injustice and address the real suffering that is ever-present. Both of these qualities help us to keep our hearts open and connected to deep care guided by wisdom.
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