Himalaya, Where the Wind Dwells (2009)

Beautifully shot film, a little low on plot however.

Himalaya, Where the Wind Dwells (2009)
Kim is on the way home after divorce procedure. He feels obsessive, watching TV news about suicide in the subway of an illegally staying labor of Nepal, Sham. He sleeps, returning home. As he dreams a small mountain village of the Himalayas, he wakes up. He goes to Sham’s funeral home. He asks people of a human rights organization in charge of the funeral arrangements to take Sham’s ashes to his family in Nepal. As Kim arrives in Zomsom, mountain region in Nepal, asks around about Sham’s home. He leaves for Jharkot with a map and a bag. Kim walks long, dry and winding roads. Climbing highlands, he suffers from nasal haemorrhage and headache because of mountain sickness. It’s in two days that he arrives in Sham’s hometown, which is located on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas with snow. There are Sham’s ill mother and his three sisters living in a ragged house. As Kim gives Sham’s ashes to the first sister of Sham’s, Sunita, she gulps down tears, but runs to a hill outside, and cries out loud in sorrow. Sunita asks Kim not to tell her families about Sham’s death. While Kim stays a night in Sham’s, he suffers from serious illness from fatigue and stomach-ache. He stays more under Sunita’s careful nursing.

RS Links

Torrent

Preview

The Teachings (2009)

Fine looking trailer for a yet to be finished project thats looking for financial support.

The Teachings
This is the revised trailer for the film, 'The Teachings'. The project is currently on hold while I try to raise the funds to complete this film. If anyone is in the position to support the making of this film, please contact me via email. peter@hollowayfilms.com

The film explores the value of empathy, the pursuit of happiness and the power of compassion in the context of a world in crisis. Central to the film are the words of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. The Teachings is based on 5 days of filming of His Holiness teaching in Sydney, Australia . The film takes the viewer on a journey around the world to experience the concept of compassion as explained by His Holiness. With the help of an eclectic group of leading thinkers, commentators, celebrities and ordinary people the film explores the simple secular message of the Dalai Lama, and using music and imagery, provides the viewer with an entertaining, slightly mischievous, challenging and highly visceral cinematic experience.

YouTube

Zen (2009 )

Zen (2009 )
Directed by Takahashi Banmei, Zen is an elegant and fascinating look into the life and times of 13th-century monk Dogen, founder of the Soto sect in Zen Buddhism. Offering a fairly faithful depiction of what is known of the monk's life, the film follows Dogen, handsomely portrayed by kabuki actor Nakamura Kantaro, from an orphan child inspired by his mother's dying words to a young monk wandering in China where he experiences his awakening. After reaching enlightenment, he returns to Kyoto to spread his teachings of silent meditation, attracting both dedicated followers and fierce detractors who cast him as a heretic. In his travels and teachings, Dogen encounters many different people. Some guide him, some follow him, and some test him, but all become crucial figures in his spiritual journey of peace and meditation. Zen's supporting cast includes Kora Kengo (Snakes and Earrings) as a young monk gone astray, Uchida Yuki (Welcome to the Quiet Room) as a prostitute and aspiring nun, and Fujiwara Tatsuya (Death Note) as the shogun haunted by inner ghosts.

Asian DVD Club

RS Links (Try a program like JDownloader for managing all those links.)
http://rapidshare.com/files/250553587/zen09.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250544903/zen09.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250544901/zen09.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250401801/zen09.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250401798/zen09.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250360785/zen09.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250360784/zen09.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250320671/zen09.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250262213/zen09.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250262209/zen09.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250227929/zen09.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250204373/zen09.part01.rar

Come Come Come Upwards (1989)

Gassho to Ossi for the link.

Come Come Come Upwards (1989)
About two women as they search in divergent ways for the Buddhist path. One woman, Soonyeo (Kang Soo-yeon), leaves her broken home to become a nun at a rural convent, where her troubled past life both consumes her inner life (as we see in flashbacks) and informs her reading of religious scripture. She meets Jinsung, an ascetic nun who excels at meditation but is inexperienced in the ways of the world. When Jinsung secludes herself in a cave to meditate, she is raped by a wily old monk, and is forced to reckon with her faith, and place in the world. Meanwhile, the monastery’s Abbess expels Soonyeo after an alcoholic criminal, whom Soonyeo saved from suicide, creates havoc at the convent. Soonyeo leaves the monastic life, but is torn between countryside and city, the sequestered spiritual life and the wearying world of dust.

Asian DVD Club

Fanshî dansu (1989)

Fanshî dansu (1989)
Yohei, a punk rocker, has to become a Buddhist monk in order to inherit a mountain temple. Yohei though initially rebelling against the tough monastic discipline learns to adjust. Then his girlfriend shows up, enticing him to return to his rock 'n' roll roots.

Asian DVD Club

OK baytong (2003)

OK baytong (2003)
On hearing the news of the death of his sister, a Buddhist monk leaves the temple where he has lived since childhood and struggles to adjust to life on the outside as an uncle to a young niece and as a businessman running a hair salon in a small Thai town in a southern province. He even must learn to ride a bicycle and zip up his trousers without injuring himself. He is confronted by a flood of feelings - sexual, for a woman and family friend across the street; as well as fear and hatred for the Muslims, who he believes is responsible for his sister's death and other sorrows in his life.

BTJunkie

Okuribito (2008)

Okuribito (2008)
Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living.

Torrentzap

Amal (2007)

What's this movie have to do with Buddhism? Not much other than it takes place in India and the main character is a Zen Master, so to speak.

Amal (2007)
Autorickshaw driver AMAL is content with the small but vital role he serves - driving customers around New Delhi as quickly and safely as possible. But his sense of duty is tested by an eccentric, aging billionaire, who, moved by Amal's humility, bequeaths him his entire estate before passing away. With only one month to discover and claim the inheritance, Amal's struggles with duty and wealth are threatened by all those around him - from a young injured beggar girl and a lovely store merchant, to the danger of the old man's upper-caste friends and siblings, all seeking to claim their share of the riches.

BTJunkie
English Subtitles

Enlightenment Guaranteed (1999)

Enlightenment Guaranteed (1999)
Noted German filmmaker Doris Dorrie directs this understated comedy about two middle-aged brothers who go to study at a Zen monastery in Japan. The two brothers could not be more different. Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht) is a bored husband and kitchenware salesman, while Gustav (Gustav Peter Wohler) is a flighty feng shui consultant and Eastern religions devotee. Just as Gustav is preparing to leave for the land of the rising sun, Uwe, whose wife just dumped him, begs his brother to let him tag along. The first night in Tokyo proves to be a disaster. After a night of drinking, the pair get lost, spend the last of their cash on an ill-fated taxi ride, lose their credit cards, and end up sleeping in some boxes on the city streets. But this deprivation prepares them for the hard living of monastic life, including 4:30 a.m. wake up calls, elaborate dining rituals, long periods of silent mediation, and a punishing cleaning routine. As the days wear on, Gustav soon finds himself buckling under the strain while Uwe demonstrates himself to be much more adaptable to a monk's life. The experience eventually brings the night-and-day brothers closer together. This film was screened at the 2000 Rotterdam Film Festival.
English, French and Spanish Subtitles.

BTJunkie

TorrentPortal

Rapidshare Links

Happy Halloween!
This being Halloween in North America I thought I'd post some Buddhist-Horror movies. Not exactly a huge genre but there are a few. Here's two of the better ones. Happy Halloween!


Jigoku - (Japan, 1960)
Shocking, outrageous, and poetic, Jigoku (Hell, a.k.a. The Sinners of Hell) is the most innovative creation from Nobuo Nakagawa, the father of the Japanese horror film. After a young theology student flees a hit-and-run accident, he is plagued by both his own guilt-ridden conscience and a mysterious, diabolical doppelganger. But all possible escape routes lead straight to hell— literally. In the gloriously gory final third of the film, Nakagawa offers up his vision of the underworld in a tour de force of torture and degradation. A striking departure from traditional Japanese ghost stories, Jigoku, with its truly eye-popping (and -gouging) imagery, created aftershocks that are still reverberating in contemporary world horror cinema.
Torrentreactor

Kwaidan - (Japan, 1964)
This is a collection of 4 Japanese ghost stories originally written by the American writer Lafcadio Hearn, who lived in Japan in the 1800s and adopted it as his homeland. One of the most famous stories is "Hoichi the Earless" about a blind biwa player haunted by the ghosts of samurai. A Buddhist monk writes the Heart Sutra on Hoichi's body to make him invulnerable to the ghosts, but forgets to write on his ears! This story reflects the belief of the power of Buddhist sutras to ward off evil spirits. Because of the influence of Christianity in the West, crucifixes are believed to ward off vampires and evil spirits - in Buddhism in the East, it is not the image of the deity, but the power of the written word, especially in its Sanskrit mantra form, to protect the believer. You don't hold up a picture or statue of Buddha to ward off evil, you use Chinese characters! It demonstrates the power of the Dharma not residing in the physical person of the Buddha, but in his teachings, and in the value of literacy in premodern society.

TPB

Un Buda (2005)

My thanks to Shan for this Fantastic film! English Subtitles can be found here but play around with the FPS timing.

Un Buda (2005)
It's the story of a young Buddhist who is searching for something beyond this reality, beyond this coexistence system, and he challenges even death itself only for pursuing his goal. A total opposite to his brother, who is a philosopher and very rational, which makes a little difficult the life together between them. After some comings and goings, our main character learns something "beyond" what it is to live intensely and his skeptical brother learns something more about what it is to live intensely.

BTJunkie

A Little Monk (2002)

Thanks to my Dharma helper Ossi for this find.

A Little Monk (2002)
A nine-year old monk, Do-nyum, has lived most of his lonely life in a quiet mountain monastery under his elderly master. Though put under a strict regimen of Buddhist teachings, meditation and chores, the child cannot help but to think of his mother, whom he cannot remember but misses dearly and hopes to be reunited with one day. He also wishes that he could be like the other children who live nearby and play games and attend school. Do-nyum's other companion is an older monk named Jung-sim, who is also struggling with staying on the path of enlightenment. The temples groundskeeper keeps reassuring Do-Nyum that his mother will come back someday. But Do-nyum, sick of waiting for a mother who may never return, agrees to be adopted by the monastery's benefactor, a wealthy widow who visits the temple every year to mourn her late son.

Avistaz

The Go Master (2006)

The Go Master (2006)
The film chronicles Qingyuan's discovery as a child prodigy in China, his move to Japan and rise as a champion. Later, he marries the leader of a cult and finds himself being exploited by the group. When relations between Japan and China deteriorate into open war, Qingyuan stays in his adopted nation. Now in his 90s, he lives there to this day, teaching and writing about Go.

Avistaz
TPB

Valley of Flowers (2006)

Valley of Flowers (2006)
Along the highest mountain passes of the Himalayas, tough, intrepid Jalan (Milind Soman) and his gang earn their living by stealing from unsuspecting travelers. Abiding by their own, unique codes of honor and dividing the spoils equally, all is routine until the arrival of the mystifying, beautiful Ushna (Mylene Jampanoi). Appearing mysteriously after the raid of a pilgrim caravan, Ushna adheres to Jalan, claiming to have seen him in her dreams, and refusing to leave his side. Sensing the unease of the rest of the men, Ushna offers to help them in their endeavors, under condition that they not ask why or how she is able to guide them to success. In the time that follows, Ushna leads the gang to tremendous exploits, gaining the respect of the men, and the admiration of Jalan, who begins to fall passionately in love with this mysterious woman. As their success increases, seemingly unstoppable, so the love between Jalan and Ushna mounts in intensity, until they seem to have entered a world of their own. No longer heeding of the world around them, Jalan and Ushna venture too far in their exploits, progressing from the theft of material objects to tampering with elements that should never be tampered with; stealing energy, luck and even the powers of levitation, the two cross over into the bounds of the supernatural. Word of the duo and their strange exploits reaches the shrewd, robust Yeti (Naseeruddin Shah), who takes after them with his three experienced bounty hunters. In the confusion of pursuit, Jalan and Ushna face a temporary separation, the shock of which drives each to desperation. Having lost luck, wealth and friends, the fated two are nevertheless fortuitously reunited. Their passion running higher than ever, they vow never to be separated again, even if this entails deceiving fate and cheating mortality. But life always reserves surprises.

Mininova

Passage to Buddha 'Hwaomkyung' (1993)

Passage to Buddha 'Hwaomkyung' (1993)
Director Jang Sun Woo might be best known for provocative, controversial films, such as “Lies, A Petal, and To You From Me”, but he has a quiet side as well. Winner of the Alfred-Bauer Prize at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival, “HwaOmKyung” (a.k.a. “Passage to Buddha”, one of Jang’s best works, is a quiet and evocatively beautiful meditation on life. Based on former monk and political activist Go Eun’s novel, “HwaOmKyung” is one of the best Buddhist-themed films Korea has produced. Oh Tae Kyung (Old Boy) gives a stunning performance as Seon Jae, a young boy who spends his life on the road in search of his mother. A modern unfolding of the Avatamsaka sutra, his spiritual odyssey leads him to telling encounters with strange people and, eventually, the essence of Buddhism.

Avistaz
Demonoid

The Burmese Harp (1956)

The Burmese Harp (1956)
Kon Ichikawa’s deeply humane, spiritually resonant masterpiece The Burmese Harp is routinely but reductionistically described as “pacifist” or “anti-war,” terms also applied to his subsequent Fires on the Plain. The description is apt in the case of the horrific Fires on the Plain, but in The Burmese Harp war is the occasion for the central theme, not the theme itself, which is nothing less than the intractable mystery of suffering and evil, affirmation of spiritual values, and the challenge to live humanely in evil circumstances. Both films were based on postwar Japanese novels, and made within ten to fifteen years of the end of the Pacific war. Both depict weary Japanese troops struggling in the backwash of a war already lost, though that loss is not yet declared in Fires on the Plain, and not fully acknowledged in The Burmese Harp. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Michio Takeyama, The Burmese Harp’s simple, almost fable-like narrative follows a division of exhausted Japanese soldiers stationed in Burma, who struggle to keep their spirits and humanity alive by singing — not just simple choruses but complex harmonies. The universality of the soldiers’ melancholy circumstances and simple longing is emphasized by the one tune to which they return again and again, Hanyu no Yadu or “There’s No Place Like Home.” Contrasted with this simple nostalgia is the harder wisdom of the proverb “You can’t go home again,” a lesson learned by one of the soldiers, a talented harpist named Mizushima (Shôji Yasui) who undergoes a spiritual transformation after being separated from his unit and disguising himself as a Buddhist monk. Burying the dead, one of the seven corporal works of mercy in Catholic tradition, plays a key role in an elegant parable of reparation and individual conscience. Although the story dwells on war-related horrors, above all the countless unburied bodies of the slain, The Burmese Harp’s message is not simply that war causes suffering. Nor, despite its Buddhist milieu, does the film endorse the Buddhist doctrine that suffering (dukkha) is caused by desire (tanha). Instead, the film declares, like the Book of Job, that we mortals do not know why suffering happens. Rather than diagnosing a cause, The Burmese Harp emphasizes the importance of compassion, humility, and spirituality in facing up to the disease.

The PirateBay

Demonoid

The Razor's Edge (1946)

Sometimes on a lazy Sunday you just need a good old film to sit down with.

"The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." —Katha-Upanishad

The Razor's Edge (1946)
Well-to-do Chicagoan, Larry Darrell, breaks off his engagement to Isabel and travels the world seeking enlightenment, eventually finding his guru India. Isabel marries Gray, and following the crash of 1929, is invited to live in Paris with her rich, social climbing, Uncle Elliot. During a sojurn there, Larry, having attained his goal, is reunited with Isabel. While slumming one night Larry, Isabel and company are shocked to discover Sophie, a friend from Chicago. Having lost her husband and child in a tragic accident, Sophie is living the low-life with the help of drugs an abusive brute. Larry tries to rehabilitate her, but his efforts are sabotaged by Isabel who has tried in vain to reignite Larry's interest in her.

Demonoid

TorrentPortal

Letter from the Mountain (2002)

This is an extremely meditative and beautifully shot film that shows the simplest things in life bring the greatest rewards.

Letter from the Mountain(Amidado Dayori ) (2002)
Akira Kurosawa's assistant director Takashi Koizumi directs the low-key drama Letter From the Mountain, based on the novel by Keishi Nagi. Highly specialized doctor Michiko (Kanako Higuchi) finds herself seized with panic attacks. She and her partner, Takao (Akira Terao), decide to leave behind their stressful lives in Tokyo for a simpler life in the small farming village of Shinshu. After meeting several sick people in the community, Michiko sets up a medical center and gradually heals herself in the process. However, many of the townspeople refuse medical treatment, preferring to let nature take its course. The conclusion involves an annual celebration suggesting the couple's acceptance in the community.

http://bt.avistaz.com/details.php?id=af1491083b53381530b4e830263eb38d1e5437d5

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4342505/Letter.From.The.Mountain.2002.DVDRip.XviD-LAJ

Meetings With Remarkable Men (1978)

The story of G.I. Gurdjieff and his travels to achieve enlightenment and inner growth. Beginning with his childhood, the movie follows his journeys through Central Asia as he discovers new levels of spirituality through music, dance and near-encounters with death.


http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3542259/Gurdjieff_-_Meetings_With_Remarkable_Men_(1978).3542259.TPB.torrent

Zen Noir (2004)

Zen Noir (2004)
A nameless 'noir' detective, still mourning the loss of his wife, investigates a mysterious death in a Buddhist temple, but his logical, left-brained crime-solving skills are useless in the intuitive, non-linear world of Zen.

If David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch and the Buddha ever got together to make a film, this would be it. Zen Noir is that rare movie which engages you on every level – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And it's also funny as hell!! Rosenbush has a thorough understanding of both the noir genre AND zen practice, and he has managed somehow to merge them inside a single story. The gorgeous, powerful visuals and beautiful, haunting score reminded me of Bertolluci's Little Buddha, but with less sentimentality and more belly laughs. Deep and slapstick, sad and surreal, this is a truly inspiring work of art.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4266143/Zen_Buddhist_Movie_-_Zen_Noir_-_Karmapa