BUDDHISM: WHEEL OF TIME
Werner Herzog, UK/Germany/France, 2003
Werner Herzog's beautiful film explores the Buddhist Kalachakra Initiation. It includes interviews with the Dalai Lama, access to secret rituals as well as footage of a pilgrimage to the holy Mount Kailash in Tibet.
WERNER HERZOG Director interview
"I'm after something deeper - the ecstasy of truth"
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Commissioner's
Comment Nick Fraser
Storyville Series Editor
It is difficult to make films about the unseen but Werner Herzog, the masterly German filmmaker, captures perfectly the atmosphere of a pilgrimage and a rite, first in on the Nepalese/Indian frontier and then in Austria.
The film is astonishingly moving and respectful of Buddhism - and for once you can see the Dalai Lama not on a platform speaking about contemporary issues, but doing what he is really there to do - praying with the faithful.
I think that the most hardened sceptic would be knocked over by the strange, wholly convincing mysticism that suffuses Werner's film.
