Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times
The film Mission Joy reveals the special friendship between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Film Club
Buddhist films and discussion for the Tricycle community
Film CLub Archive
Former Film Club Selections
The Rise and Fall of the Tibetan Empire: The Animated History of Tibet
This animated documentary highlights the rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire and the first spread of Buddhism to Tibet in the 7th century CE.
Rebel for Life
Rebel for Life is a powerful story about climate activism, the spirit of community, and the future of life on Earth.
I Leave Home
This heartwarming drama film follows a man yearning to become a Buddhist monk and the obstacles he is met with along the way.
Khata: Purity or Poison?
What happens when a sacred object, like the Khata, becomes ubiquitous? Today, the most common raw material for the Khata is a synthetic chemical fiber called polyester. Due to the widespread use of Khata in everyday common practices, discarded Khata can be found in rivers and lakes all across the larger Himalayan world. Many animals die from eating them, especially during the winter when grass become scarce. Fish and birds often get caught and die in the threads of the Khata. This ethnographic documentary film explores the paradoxical relationship between the meaning of Khata and its materiality, between purity and poison, with the aim of raising awareness of the unintended consequences of our good intentions.
Gyütö
To hear the sound of the ocean in the Himalayas… This unlikely wish takes a film director and her three girls to Gyütö, where a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, perched high, echoes day and night the sound of sacred tantric chants of meditation, which sound like the waves of the ocean. Wandering freely about wherever their curiosity leads them, they discover the daily life of 400 monks living there. Over time, a dialogue develops and a growing complicity emerges. From this intimate immersion, a film takes form, unfolding like a wave both visually and in sound. The reality of Buddhism is revealed in a way that is unprecedented, in the spontaneity of the questions asked, as well as with the sensitive understanding of a child’s point of view and with no proselytization at all.
Not One and Not Two
Not One and Not Two follows the intersecting stories of Young-mok, a Zen practitioner ill with an unknown disease, and his artist girlfriend, Seon-hwa. Oscillating between two narratives, the film poses the question: while individuals are not the same, are they not so different, either?
