In addition to helming the Carl Cherry Center, Robert Reese is a Soto Zen priest who’s been practicing Zen for 24 years. He’s programmed four films for Thursday screenings this month that show the philosophy in different angles.
The idea came from a film series called the Unseen God at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “In film there is sometimes an unseen or hidden element,” he says, “that either refers to God or the lack of God.”
He will introduce each film, then moderate discussions afterward. The Cup is this Thursday, a warm, lighthearted 1999 film by NYU Film School-educated Tibetan Lama Khyentse Norbu (a consultant on Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha), based on a true story about a boy in a Tibetan monastery who wants to watch the 1998 World Cup on TV.
“It addresses themes of a 2,500-year religion and how it meets contemporary society,” Reese says.
The next film in the series comes Sept. 11, the Korean production of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring, which, like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, tracks the life of a child, but in this case from his boyhood to his fatherhood.
“[It’s] a wonderfully profound meditation on Buddhist issues like transiency, impermanence and identity,” Reese says. “Very little dialogue. One of these beautifully photographed films.”
On Sept. 18, it’s Fearless, Peter Weir’s 1993 film starring Jeff Bridges as a regular man who experiences a near-death in a plane crash, which changes how he lives. And 1997’s Kundun (Sept 25) by Martin Scorsese follows the early life and trials of the Dalai Lama. These are films that use the medium to explore the world around us, that which we see and that which can’t be seen.
THROUGH THE SCREEN: BUDDHISM AND FILM plays 7pm Thursdays in September at Carl Cherry Center, Fourth and Guadalupe, Carmel. Free. 920-8303, www.CarlCherryCenter.org
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