Life as Cinema by Anika Tokarchuk is a 56-minute documentary about the making of The Cup (1999) (高山上的足球盃), the debut feature film of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche (aka Khyentse Norbu).
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, a spiritual director of several Buddhist colleges in India, Bhutan and Sikkim, is recognized in his culture as the third incarnation of the Khyentse lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Life as Cinema voices his Buddhist reflections on the impermanence of life.
PHOTO: BEN ZULLO
The film begins with Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche making a shadow butterfly on the wall with his hands. While the butterfly's magnified shadow flaps its dark wings on a white wall, he asks, "How do you know this is a butterfly?"
The shadow on the wall is like reality projected on the screen of our mind. The layers of illusion and reality are interwoven into each other. While the theme of illusion is dominant in the film, the encounter between modernity and tradition in everyday Tibetan culture is also telescoped into Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche's character.
Educated in London and given his first movie-related job by Bernardo Bertolucci in Little Buddha, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoch rides the tide of westernization and redefines his role as a Rinpoche.
When Tokarchuk informs the Dalai Lama that Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche is making a feature film based on the real events of the monks at Dzongsar Institute, he breaks into laughter commenting, "Oh, I see, lamas are actors now."
As she reveals in her documentary, the actors in The Cup are all from a real monastery and cast by their ecclesiastical superior. (Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche coaxed 14-year-old Jamyang Lodro into playing the role of Orgyen in The Cup with a promise of taking him to Disneyland.)
Jovial and with a sense of absurdity, Life as Cinema rings quiet notes of political urgency. Unlike other dramas on Tibet such as Kundun (1997) and Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Tokarchuk does not portray Tibet as mired in Chinese suppression. Instead, Life as Cinema tracks the footsteps of Tibetan Buddhists to India, France, England, Canada, Hong Kong, and of course Taiwan.
It is, after all, a documentary on Tibet-on-the-move, a film on the nature of change and openness.
The second part of the trilogy will go into the background of Dzongsar monastery in Tibet and focus on Karpu Lama, a Tibetan who now lives in Taiwan.
In a partial preview, Karpu's exile from Tibet is captured in a soliloquy that drifts across beautifully crafted images of Tibetan valleys and Taipei's streets. "Life is dreamlike," says Tokarchuk, "but it is also telling a history."
For your information :
There will be a free public screening of Life as Cinema at the Wisteria Tea House (
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
RSS