Desire and Asceticism - Buddhist form and Christian values

"Frühling, Sommer, Herbst, Winter ... and Frühling" is a poetic meditation on the themes of isolation, desire and violence, guilt and atonement. South-Korean director Kim Ki-duk portrays the isolated world of a Buddhist monk who teaches a young boy. Each of the five chapters describes a seminal moment in their lives lived in the middle of a lake in mountainous surroundings of almost unearthly beauty, and amidst isolated hermits. The moral of the film tends towards a Christian pessimism, a bleak view of humanity, seeing human life as a ritualised cycle of eternally repeated mistakes and problems – conveyed in a picturesque world of Buddhist-like imagery.

7 p.m.

Talk: Dr. habil. Marcus Stiglegger, film theoretician, author, and publisher of the magazine: Ikonen, which appears in print and online, Mainz University

Film

Frühling, Sommer, Herbst, Winter ... and Frühling

D: Kim Ki-Duk, Korea/Germany 2003, 103 min., German version