Carving the Divine

99 minutes
Directed by Yujiro Seki

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director via Zoom.

This documentary by the filmmaker Yujiro Seki is a remarkable account of a contemporary busshi, a master artisan of statues of the Buddha, and the apprentices in his workshop. It offers an insider’s peek at both the millennium-long tradition of producing icons for temples and sacred sites and also the contemporary setting in which this tradition is maintained. It is eye-opening to see the diverse circumstances, some Buddhist and some not, that inspire people to take up this craft today and the extraordinary effort that they expend to perfect it. This account stands at the intersection of past and present production of Buddhist images in Japan and provides insight to anyone interested in that closed world.

• James C. Dobbins Fairchild Professor Emeritus of  Religion and East Asian Studies Oberlin College