BFF to Program Three Year Film Series at the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution and Buddhist Film Foundation will co-present an ongoing film series, Screening the Buddha, beginning in May and running through November 2020, in connection with the exhibition Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice Across Asia at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC.

The full program and schedule for the May screenings are now online.

The exhibition brings together more than two hundred artworks, spanning two millennia, to explore Asia’s rich Buddhist heritage. These represent the diverse schools that arose from the Buddhist traditions that originated in India.

“This is an ideal pairing of art exhibition and the Buddhist cinema we’ve been presenting around the world in our International Buddhist Film Festivals: diverse in source, style, and focus,” says BFF executive director Gaetano Maida. “We’re honored and very excited to be working with the Smithsonian again.”

BFF has twice previously presented films at the Smithsonian’s Meyer Auditorium: in 2004, The Laughing Buddha, a series of comedic works; and in 2010, Tibetan Buddhism: Films from Around the World, a series to complement the exhibition In the Realm of the Buddha. The premiere of David Grubin’s groundbreaking The Buddha was screened as part of that series, in advance of its PBS broadcast premiere.

The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation is the exhibition’s lead sponsor.

The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery—together, the Freer|Sackler—are the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art. Located on the National Mall in Washington, DC, these museums hold and care for world-class collections of Asian and American art.