Monk’s film tells essence of her beliefs,wins awards

Bhiksuni Hyeyeo

Nobody believed Bhiksuni Hyeyeo, a fully ordained female Buddhist monk, when she said she wanted to make a movie. “They said monasticism and movies don’t go together,” she said.
But the woman with a shaved head created the 5 1/2 minute-long “Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form,” which won the grand prize at the Seoul World Short Film & Video Festival on Sept. 3. It won another award at the 69th Unica 2007 World Festival of Non-Professional Films held in Liptovsky Mikulas, Slovakia. Unica is an acronym for the French Union Internationale du Cinema.
Hyeyeo is the head of Daehae Temple in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang. The JoongAng Ilbo met with her recently at a tea house in Insa-dong, central Seoul.
The film project began last year by chance, she said, when she met Max Hansli, the president of Unica. “We were having a conversation on movies when I said, ‘You may know more than me about making movies, but I can still teach you what a good movie is.’
“I promised to produce a movie with truth in it,” she said. “I think a movie is a vessel, the core of which lies in how it holds ideas.”
True to her word, Hyeyeo set to work, but time was limited. She had to submit the piece within a year for the Seoul World Short Film & Video Festival, and she didn’t know the ABCs of moviemaking. “I said, ‘Let’s make a movie,’ to the worshippers at my temple, but nobody took it seriously,”’ she said
Park Hui-cheon, a worshipper at Daehae Temple, recalled, “I thought the idea of Hyeyeo making a movie was preposterous. Other worshippers were angered by the idea. They even protested. ‘How can we even think of making a movie?’ they asked.” Despite his reservations, Park persuaded the templegoers to give the bhiksuni a chance.
Hyeyeo decided to use the mantra “Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form,” as the title and theme of her movie. “I wanted to convey the substance of my religion,” Hyeyeo said. “A movie is one of the ways to do this.”
Eventually, with help from young worshippers at Daehae Temple, she established the True Movie Institute. Their finished product is a simple film featuring puppies, children, space and a person on his sickbed. It sought to express the idea that everything originates from and terminates in one source. At the Seoul World Short Film & Movie Festival, the film won the highest honors over more than 200 submissions from 33 countries. Han Ok-hui, the head of the judging committee, said, “It is the best piece of philosophical art. It was an honor for us to be able to evaluate such a film.”
At the Unica film festival, Hyeyeo’s film won fourth place among 124 submissions from 29 countries.
Hansli was astonished by the movie’s success. As a result, he is planning to come to Korea next spring to learn more about Buddhism, Hyeyeo said.
She is already preparing her next film.

By Baik Sung-ho JoongAng Ilbo [yhwang@joongang.co.kr]