Travellers and Magicians (Dzongkha: ཆང་ཧུབ་ཐེངས་གཅིག་གི་འཁྲུལ་སྣང) is a 2003 BhutaneseDzongkha language film written and directed by Khyentse Norbu, a reincarnatelama of Tibetan Buddhism, who is also known as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. The movie is the first feature film shot entirely in the Kingdom of Bhutan. The majority of the cast are not professional actors; Dendup, a well-known Bhutanese radio actor and producer, is the exception. This movie is among the first to take a Himalayan Buddhist perspective. (New aspects)
The film is a biography ofDōgen Zenji, a Japanese ZenBuddhist teacher. After travelling to China to study, Dogen founded the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. The Buddhist Film Foundation described it as “a poignant, in-depth, reverent and surprisingly moving portrait of Eihei Dogen.”
Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway.
The film’s plot centres on three married women — a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.
The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, most specifically ‘The Billy Goats Gruff‘, because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett’s son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:
Bees in the Trees
Dawn Card Castles
Deadman’s Catch
Flights of Fancy (or Reverse Strip Jump)
The Great Death Game
Hangman’s Cricket
The Hare and Hounds
Sheep and Tides
In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure and symmetry. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear, the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, sometimes spoken by the characters.
TimeSpace Warps 