THE GIANT BUDDHAS | A FILM BY CHRISTIAN FREI

The Buddhas returning to Bamiyan!
Slide Show of the film screening in Afghanistan July 2006

A film about the destruction of the famous Buddha statues in Afghanistan.

First, we destroyed the small statue. It was a woman. Then we blew up her husband.

Taliban Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar
during a press conference March 2001

I reached the conclusion that the statue of Buddha was not demolished by anybody. It crumbled out of shame. Out of shame for the world's ignorance towards Afghanistan.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iranian Filmmaker

Buddha

In march 2001, two huge Buddha statues were blown up
in the remote area of Bamiyantal in Afghanistan.

Tis dramatic event surrounding the ancient stone colossi -
unique proof of a high culture that bloomed until the
13th century along the Silk Road - is the starting point
for a cinematic essay on fanaticism and faith, terror and
tolerance, ignorance and identity.

Oscar nominated director Christian Frei's thought-provoking
film journeys along a perimeter that both divides and
unites people and cultures.

Synopsis by Sean Farnel

How did it look and sound here fifteen hundred years ago? How did it smell? Conjuring the past, sifting the present, Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei is seeking the elusive, the poetic, the profound. We are in Bamiyan, the great valley in Afghanistan, site of what were once - not long ago - two giant Buddha statues. At fifty-three metres high, one of them was the tallest-standing representation of Buddha in the world.

But that was another world. In February of 2001, the Taliban issued an edict that all non-Islamic statues be destroyed. By March, the Buddhas were blown to bits. There was international outrage and this hypocrisy is one of the subjects of Frei's beautifully meandering inquiry. He quotes the Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "I am now convinced that the Buddhist statues were not demolished. They crumbled to pieces out of shame, because of the West's ignorance

toward Afghanistan."

On another path, in another period, Frei follows the footsteps of Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese monk famed for his sixteen-year spiritual quest along the Silk Road to India. Bamiyan was one of his pit stops.

Xuanzang's journals tantalize with evocative descriptions of the Bamiyan Buddhas and tease with mention of an even grander Buddha at a nearby monastery. Estimated to be three hundred metres long, it would be the largest statue in human history, an eighth wonder. Fascinated by the legend of the "sleeping Buddha," a French archaeologist begins to excavate even as he decries the plundering of Afghanistan's history. "Squeezed dry like a lemon," he says of the country.

In Canada, Afghan writer and journalist Nelofer Pazira reflects on an old photograph of her father posing before the giant Buddhas. Yet another time and something more ephemeral - music and laughter, also squeezed dry. In Leshan, China, a kitschy attempt to rebuild the Bamiyan Buddha as a tourist attraction; in Zurich high-tech reconstructions using "photogrammetry"; UNESCO asking for "anastylosis." Frei joins the search.

But what are they seeking on this quest, on which,
centuries ago, a Chinese monk encountered
"bewilderment and disorientation"?

Statement from Christian Frei

I view my film as a hymn to the diversity of opinions, religions and cultures. Nobody - neither the Taliban nor American politics - should force the rest of the world into homogeneity and uniformity. The dispassionate way in which I narrate the fanatical iconoclast perpetrated by the Taliban, is also my political message. Of course it is an act of ignorance to knock off the head of a defenceless statue and to destroy it. Yet the response to this ignorance shouldn't be countered by further ignorance.

Shooting of the film started two weeks before the outbreak of the war in Iraq in March 2003. Cinematographer Peter Indergand and I managed to get an interview with "Al Jazeera" star reporter Taysir Alony. He was the only journalist permitted to film the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. I was aware that he had excellent contacts to the inner circle of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, I was

deeply shocked when Taysir was arrested in Spain just a few weeks after shooting was complete. The public prosecutor accuses him of having regular phone contact with and providing support for terrorists.

The blowing up of the two colossal Buddhas in the remote Bamiyan valley in March 2001 was a beginning. Just six months later the attack on the Twin Towers in New York followed. However, "The Giant Buddhas" is not a film about terror, rather a film about transience, a film about the loss of cultural identity, about the search for truth, beauty and diversity. I was simply interested in looking back on an event that shook the world and decided to embark on a film journey.

A journey along a multi-facetted line that both connects and divides people and cultures.