Bhutanese filmmaker's Buddhist painting on reel

The temptation to draw parallels between legendary Hollywood director Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and Bhutanese filmmaker Khyentse Norbu's Hema Hema: Sing Me A Song While I Wait is obvious: a secret gathering; masked men and women and their lascivious tendencies; a murder motivated by lust and the punishment meted out for tearing the veil of anonymity.

But these are superficial resemblances. Hema Hema... is a celluloid exploration into the spiritual realm of Buddhism by a renowned Buddhist teacher and spiritual leader Norbu, who is regarded as the main incarnation of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, the spiritual heir of one of the most influential and admired 19th century incarnations of Manjushri (the Buddha of Wisdom), Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo.

The film mines the concepts of life and death and rebirth without for once appearing to be preachy. That's the power of Norbu's storytelling and the cinematic effects he achieves through richly choreographed dance and acrobatic performances and an elaborate set of rituals.

The story unfolds deep into the forest where nature and human nature elides and collides in myriad ways. At the core of Hema Hema is the emphasis on here and now, since the past and the future are merely notions. The director's note clears the fog for the uninitiated. Norbu writes: "Bardo literally means 'intermediate state', though it is generally used more narrowly to describe the state of existence between death and rebirth. Both meanings are at play in the film."

The Buddhist understanding is that we are supposedly functioning and existing within a gap or intermediate state all the time—in our present life between yesterday and tomorrow and between past and future, and in the larger sense between our last life and next life." Yet the film also celebrates death, which is perceived as freedom from the trappings of life and the cycle of rebirth.Tshewang Dendup, the assistant director of the film, who is in Mumbai for the MAMI festival where Hema Hema... was screened, elaborates it further. "Death is so much integral to our culture. The Bhutanis have an elaborate grief-coping mechanism. For 49 days, the deceased's family and relatives perform an exhaustive set of rituals, including hoisting flags, conducting pujas, cremating the body, collecting the bones and pulverising them and finally taking the remains to the mountain. Through this collective exercise, the good bye is complete. The process helps one grapple with the sense of loss," says Dendup.

For Norbu, cinema is a Buddhist painting, a medium through which he can tell stories about his country. The world also gets a generous glimpse into Buddhism.