\u201cMoving from Emptiness: the Life and Art of a Zen Dude\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\nWhat is Zen? Short answer: silence or complete emptiness. What does that mean? In an emotionally captivating documentary about Zen calligraphic artist Alok Hsu Kwang-han, an answer to the latter question goes something like this: \u201cIn Zen, you absolutely have to do things the way everybody else does, unless you don\u2019t.\u201d Zen spiritual leader John Tarrant laughingly describes Alok as one of the \u201cunless you don\u2019t\u201d people.<\/p>\n
In \u201cMoving from Emptiness: the Life and Art of a Zen Dude\u201d from directors Shaeri Richards and Jerry Hartleben, the art of painting psychic images \u2014 or in other words a life\u2019s journey \u2014 begins with a single step, that of putting brush to canvas in Zen calligraphic portraiture. In partnership with his beloved Raylene Abbott, Kwang-han\u2019s Zen Arts workshops are \u201creally about the artist becoming more aware\u201d of what their energy is telling them. Alok explains: \u201cI like painting people\u2019s energy and their essence and their evolution.\u201d Attendees learn to begin with a metaphorical blank page or in other words, to begin from a point of nothingness; \u201c\u2026 this intimacy with not-knowing allows the creativity to come through.\u201d<\/p>\n
How do you get to this place of intimacy? Kwang-han believes that the mind builds a prison \u2014 a raincoat of suffering \u2014 that not only stifles creativity but also can hold us captive until we choose either repression or expression. Where do you start and what choices do you have to make? How could something as abstract as emotion or as elusive as water be painted?<\/p>\n
More to the point, how could a young Chinese boy move from life with a mother who so greatly feared post World War II Japanese soldiers that she tried to abort her unborn son, to the graceful state of being a Zen calligraphic artist? The curing that had to happen for Alok Hsu Kwang-han to get past the horror of \u201chow families pass on their shit\u2026.\u201d is a voyage of emotions and will be sure to resonate with viewers.
\nThe strong visual images of a healing peach tree are a powerful symbolic representation of the therapeutic path he took.<\/p>\n
From a filmmaker\u2019s perspective, \u201cZen Dude\u201d is documentary filmmaking at its finest. It incorporates narrative film structure into documentary style, the result being a powerful, attention-holding tale. We see not only Master Kwang-han\u2019s self-transformation but also his effect on art workshop attendees as he teaches them how to begin from a point of nothingness. While Alok demonstrates brush technique, he reflects on one of his own monochromatic paintings: \u201cYou know what it reminds me of? The path straight to the mountain top has ten thousand bends.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMoving from Emptiness: The Life and Art of a Zen Dude\u201d will screen (along with short films \u201cThe Novelist [link] and Globe Trot [link]) on Saturday May 3, 2014 at 3:30 pm at the Center for Contemporary Arts. Two past Sedona Film Festival screenings were complete sellouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Documentary Feature |69 mins. | USA Director: Shaeri Richards, Jerry Hartleben Zen, Life and the Art of Non-Doing A Review of \u201cMoving from Emptiness: the Life and Art of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"festival_year":[],"class_list":["post-10842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10842"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19438,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10842\/revisions\/19438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10842"},{"taxonomy":"festival_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/festival_year?post=10842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Moving](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/santafefilmfestival.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Moving-From-Emptiness-197x300.jpg?resize=197%2C300\")
Documentary Feature |69 mins. | USA