[Buddha-l] New film: The Giant Buddhas, directed by Christian Frei, DE

[jkirk]

Hope the film makes it to Boise, Idaho! Otherwise, it may now be available on Netflix.
Joanna
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http://www.giant-buddhas.com/en/synopsis/# film website
>From one press comment:

      Bangkok International Film Festival  Feb 18.2006  
     
            For the Taliban, the March 2001 demolition of two colossal 1500-year-old buddhas carved into a cliff in Afghanistan's remote Bamiyan Valley was an end to 'the idols' that blasphemed Islamic law; but for Christian Frei, Oscar-nominated documentary film- maker (War Photographer), it marked the beginning of a journey into the heart of several mysteries. What is the origin of the giant Buddhas that gazed down at pilgrims and merchants traveling the Silk Road? How should the politicians, archaeologists and humanitarians of the world respond to this act of cultural terrorism? And what, ultimately, is the meaning of their destruction? In answering these questions Frei takes the viewer from the pre-Islamic world of the Hazari people whose families have lived in the Bamiyan caves for generations to modern day, high-tech labs where computer scientists are creating 3-D virtual reconstructions of the Buddhas and devising technologies to lift and set surviving fragments of stone into the now precarious niches. Set to the haunting melodies of Arvö Part and Philip Glass, The Giant Buddhas is a moving lament to the enormity of Afghanistan's cultural loss. Should the Buddhas be reconstructed? Frei turns to Buddha to provide a fitting epitaph: "All things change. Nothing is permanent."
           
     
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