TUESDAY 8 | Filmed in Cambodia, France and England, director Alan Canner’s The Cross And The Bodhi Tree explores Christian encounters with Buddhism by interweaving the bustle and antiquities of Buddhist Cambodia with the serenity of an English convent. The documentary depicts the spiritual journeys of a French Catholic priest who has worked in Cambodia since 1965 and an Anglican nun who lives a life of silence and prayer at a convent in Oxford. Father François Ponchaud, a member of the Foreign Missions of Paris, has translated the Bible into Khmer and written the definitive history of the Catholic Church in Cambodia. In 1977, he wrote Cambodia Year Zero – the book that alerted the world to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime. Mother Rosemary has long nurtured an interest in Buddhism and in 1991 spent two months at a Buddhist monastery. Both have had to face questions posed by the head-on collision of two belief systems, and their answers – direct, lucid and humble – result in a film that is as thought-provoking as it is profound.
WHO: The spiritually inclined
WHAT: The Cross And The Bodhi Tree screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm April 8
WHY: Witness what happens when two belief systems collide