Japan

Taiwan Premiere

The documentary Carving the Divine offers a rare and intimate look into the life and artistic process of modern-day Busshi – practitioners of a 1400 year lineage of woodcarving that’s at the heart of Japanese, Mahayana Buddhism.

The story opens as Master Koun Seki, the former apprentice of renowned Busshi, Kourin Saito, interviews a candidate applying to be Master Seki’s new apprentice. Quickly though, we discover this apprenticeship and the Būshi’s life in general to be far more austere, and far less glamorous, 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.”

Eighteen months after the nuclear meltdown, children in Fukushima are suffering from severe nose bleeds and are developing skin rashes and thyroid cysts. Citing a lack of transparency in the official medical testing of their children and the ineffectiveness of the decontamination of their homes and schools, the children’s mothers take radiation monitoring into their own hands.