Buddhism in Western cinematography: image formation and interpretations

Abstract

The paper attempts to reveal some peculiarities of western cinematographic interpretation of Buddhism. It is argued that movies on Buddhism can be divided into two main categories: the films illustrating some events from the Buddhist history, with the ones about the Tibet constituting a separate category, and the fi lms which do not deal with Buddhism directly but feature some Buddhist ideas. It is shown that in most cases the movies of the last category include too broad religious ideas and, in fact, fail to be regarded as Buddhist. It is claimed that the image of Buddhism created in the western films is highly idealized. Th e reasons of Buddhism popularity in the West are also analyzed in the paper and the controversy arising when interpreting Buddhist image in the fi lms is discussed.

Keywords:

Buddhism, cinematograph, the Tibet, Dalai Lama