Ritual Apparitions and a Buddhist Theory of Film

Date: 

Monday, April 2, 2018, 5:30pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Common Room, Center for the Study of World Religions, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138

Annual Ahnkook Lecture in Korean Buddhism; Co-sponsored by the Korea Institute
4/2 Div School Poster
Francisca Cho
Professor of Buddhist Studies, Georgetown University

This year's Ahnkook Lecture in Korean Buddhism explores the rudiments of a Buddhist theory of film. A Buddhist theory of film is different from interpreting movies through Buddhist categories or discerning the possible Buddhist effects of cinema. Rather, a theory of film is an explicitly discursive proposition about what the phenomenon of cinema is, apart from its particular contents and instantiations. Francisca Cho proposes that Buddhist epistemic frameworks regarding the nature of ritual apparitions offer an account of the religious possibilities of film that is absent in Western phenomenological conversations on the same topic.

Francisca Cho is Professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University. She received her doctorate in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her research focuses on the expression of Buddhism through fiction, poetry, and film in East Asia.