Waiting in the bardo: the Buddhist film festival kicks off

The Golden Calfs have not even been handed out yet or the next film festival is already about to begin. Friday 30 September will see the 11th Buddhist Film Festival Europe  (BFFE) kicks off at Eye in Amsterdam with a very special film. The opening film is produced in one of the smallest film countries and one of the most fascinating countries in the Far East: Bhutan.

According to IMDB only 59 films have been made in Bhutan. The first in 1999 by the director of the opening film of the BFFE: Khyentse Norbu. At the end of the last century, he made The Cup, an utterly charming film about football fever in a Tibetan monastery. Now he is back with Hema Hema, sing me a song while I Wait. The film is set in a forest, where masked people perform a rare ritual in which all participants must remain anonymous.

That anonymity does not always bring out the best in people is a great premise for the story. It promises something with betrayal, murder and love, but it is also a journey towards self-knowledge. This sounds like the story could fly hard out of proportion or that it is just too floaty a film-with-a-message, but the Toronto International Film Festival speaks of a dazzling film. Norbu is therefore a seasoned filmmaker, with 5 titles to his credit by now. He has also worked as a technical advisor on Little Buddha, the spectacular biopic About Buddha by Bernardo Bertolucci.

Filming llama

Besides being a filmmaker, he is a lama, a Buddhist monk. This is well reflected in the stories he tells and the settings in which he does: monasteries, monks and rituals. Yet Hema hema not based on ancient rituals, Norbu has written most of it himself and only a few rituals and masks are traditional.

In the bardo

The time, the waiting from the title, is a reference to the Bardo, a term from Tibetan Buddhism referring to the time (forty days, I think), that a deceased person waits for a new incarnation. An interim time, in other words. The bardo has appeared in a film before this year, namely in Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog, about Laurie's dog's transition period to his death.

Hema Hema: Sing me a song while I wait is the opening film of the BFFE. The ambassador of Bhutan will conduct the opening. Perhaps then she will also be able to tell us why Gross National Happiness (Gross National Happiness) might be a healthier index for a country than gross national product.