The East Asia Center, the Department of Art and the Fralin Museum will be hosting Yujiro Seki, director and producer of Carving the Divine - Buddhist Sculptors of Japan, for a screening of his documentary film, Friday, October 4, at 5:00 p.m. in Campbell 153.
Carving the Divine is a documentary film that offers a rare look into a 1400-year-old Buddhist woodcarving tradition and the practitioners struggling to preserve its legacy in a rapidly changing Japan.
Determined to pass his craft down to future generations, Master Koun Seki, the former apprentice of renowned Busshi, Kourin Saito, interviews a candidate applying to be his new apprentice. Quickly though, we discover this apprenticeship and the Busshi’s life to be far less glamorous, and much more austere, than we (or the Candidate) would’ve likely imagined.
Once Master Seki makes his selection, we’re taken on a trip through a guild culture unlike anything existing today in The West: From the growing pains of a novice apprentice, to the entire guild working together as one body to create breathtaking works of art, to the monkish practice of the famed, Grand Master Saito himself, alone on his quest to “leave nothing but great works behind.”