Cartoon Movie Named “the Life Of Buddha”

[aprin]

Project Title : Produce project of a cartoon movie named “The Life of Buddha”

Media Standard Co., Ltd. has proceeded a Cartoon Movie Project called “Life of the Buddha” in produce, with this cartoon movie, the company believes that the time when it’s released to the public ; it’ll be a benefit for all individuals, community, and its nation in many ways. The content of the story is divided into 4 parts, namely the 1st part is the Buddha has taken birth, 2nd part is the Buddha was delivered, 3rd part is the Buddha became enlightened, 4th last part is the Buddha preached Dharma till he attained nirvana, the total time is

90 - 100 minutes. ....

For more detail., please visit : http://www.thelifeofbuddha.net/project-E.htm

........ In the part of 3D animation, it has been employed to take over the whole of this part because it’s the work part which was allotted into the part of the Computer Graphic and Special Effect. However, the recording will be recorded onto the film including the Software program; we already contacted Siamphat Co., Ltd. it will be the last step before projecting the film.

The company already carried out the project about 70%. Amount of money that has invested was 108 million baht; Production will be proceeded started from 1 January 2006. To calculate the % overall of the project out of 100%, at the present time; it’s 40% completed in which remainder of task is supposed to be finished by August 2007 and to modify for 2 months; October and September. The cartoon movie will be viewing before 5 December 2007 on behalf of HM King Bhumibol will be 80 years of age.

Let's view

Clip video :

[thaibebop]

This I want to see!

[sabaijai]

I saw the trailer for this animated version of the Buddha's life story at a cinema in Chiang Mai today. It will be released very soon.

[seonai]

Wow, sounds great

[seonai]

Anyone know what this one is - found it while looking at above clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1QVQlBaYG8...feature=related

It's great, you can watch parts 1-5 too

[camerata]

It looks like the BBC documentary on the Buddha.

[camerata]

I haven't seen the Thai "Life of the Buddha" yet but this review by Pali scholar Eisel Mazard on prachathai.com sounds very disappointing:

Be warned: Thai film: The Life of Buddha

Several days ago, I saw the "major motion picture" titled The Life of Buddha -- a Thai-made cartoon, that will doubtless define many of the assumptions about the historical Buddha for some time to come (at least within Thailand, if not beyond, as English-translation DVDs are available).

Precisely because the film is regarded as an attempt to portray the historical Buddha, its wildly unhistorical character is difficult to behold without a wince.

Textual scholars will immediately recognize the events as hastily cobbled together from Ashvaghosa and the Lalitavistara -- viz., non-Pali, non-Theravada, Sanskrit sources (now considered "Mahayana").

Thus, while the source material selected is fundamentally alien to the tradition of Buddhism in Thailand, the film-makers have attempted to impose "Thai" elements in a manner both artless and anachronistic.

Perhaps the most striking example: they depict Devadatta reading Pali from a manuscript written in Khom (classical Cambodian) orthography! Here is ancient Cambodia written into ancient India (with the ocean and the passage of over a thousand years that separates the two simply smeared). Perhaps more disturbing: the Buddha's followers are depicted as exclusively male, with no female monastics of any kind -- apparently just to avoid Thai discomfort on this issue (currently it is illegal for female renunciates to beg with bowl in Thailand, and charges are pressed on this from time to time, to keep the women "in their place" in the modern Thai notion of Buddhism -- notwithstanding what the historical Buddha taught, or that he had female renunciates as disciples, etc.).

A long cataloge of such historical errors could be provided -- and, presumably, somebody in a department of cultural studies will do so eventually.

As with many modern attempts to re-tell the life of the Buddha (even in contemporary Sri Lanka), the main defects of the narrative are:

(1) the focus is almost exclusively on "magical" events surrounding the birth, childhood, and death of the Buddha -- viz., omitting the actual philosophy and adult life that made the historical figure worth remembering in the first place,

(2) instead of philosophic debate, the Buddha is simply depicted traversing the countryside of India to perform banal miracles (e.g., fighting a magic snake, making it rain indoors, etc.) to "win" the "faith" of converts -- and this is both fundamentally boring to behold, and wildly extraneous to any reason (secular or religious) for respecting the historical Buddha or his teaching,

(3) there is neither any interest in the social/historical reality that the Buddha spoke to (in India of his time), nor is there any interest in the social/historical reality that the audience now inhabits, and that the content of the film might address.

Under heading #3, we could note that a Sri Lankan (or mainland Indian) film along the same lines would at least mention the existence of the caste system, and the Buddha's critique thereof; but not so for the Thais. It would also be easy to imagine some other film-maker having an interest in issues that vitiate modern Thailand, such as alcoholism, drug-addiction, prostitution, etc. -- but this is purely "cloud-cuckoo-land" filmmaking.

The film is garbage; however, the monks and laypeople that now step forward in praise of it (as an accurate depiction of the historical Buddha) do us a great favor in discrediting themselves.

The same may well be said of the craze for "Jatukam" amulets in Thailand; it is as if the most corrupt had devised these as a means of having the worst elements of Thai monasticism identify themselves, at the same time convincing all the dunces to wear a sign around their necks in public to declare their own gullibility.

The saddening question is this: will there ever be an interest in the historical material that the Pali suttas hold, such as might challenge the widespread assumptions built up from half-remembered legends of Ashavghosa, the Lalitavistara, and Jataka fables ("Wet-san-don", etc.)?

In Thailand, the answer is "no". The Buddha they believe in shaved his head, and yet maintained a full head of hair. He evidently never said, wrote, or recited anything of philosophic significance, and is instead an object of worship simply on account of his (supposed) royal blood and conjurer's tricks.

So far as the dramatist's art is concerned, I here recall Schopenhauer's comment on Dante's epic poems: the first (inferno) had a great deal of dramatic interest, the second (purgatory) less so, and then the last (paradise) was an utter bore, as it simply floated from one cloud to the next, with no suffering or conflict to provide dramatic interest. So too, here, the film-makers never considered that it might be an aesthetic mistake to delete suffering -- not only because the Buddha's philosophy is (in some sense) "about" suffering, but also because drama (per se) requires suffering to satisfy the requirements of the stage. If we turn ancient India into paradise, and put a halo around all of the characters' heads, all that remains is for a bunch of figures to float around, making resounding declarations in echoing voices -- viz., there is, strictly speaking, no plot.

But ancient India was no such paradise, and the other parties the Buddha debated with (and preached to) provided much more than just mute astonishment before a haloed spectacle -- they provided real opposition based on their own religious and philosophical views, and, moreover, they confronted him with real problems based on their own experience.

There was (and is) "a point" and "a plot" to the Pali canon; and it's a shame that both the film-makers, and so much of the Thai audience, simply miss the point.