Buddhist lama blends Tinseltown and Tibet

Wearing the typical attire of a polar fleece pullover, sitting amid booths promoting dot.com this and dot.com that, he discusses his film with less of the nervous fervor of the other first-time visitors to the Sundance Film Festival.

But then, Mr. Norbu (who's attending the Sundance Film Festival for his feature The Cup) is the only festival filmmaker who's also a pre-eminent Tibetan Buddhist lama.

Maybe it's the West's perception of Eastern religion that makes the idea of a lama with a second, far more public career seem very incongruous.

When we think of Tibetan monks, we tend to think of dreamy, zenlike temples far, far away with occupants renouncing worldly goods for a higher spirituality.

This couldn't be further from the truth, says Mr. Norbu during an interview at the festival late last month. "It's not that odd [to be a filmmaker and a lama]," he says. "I can understand why people ask this more in the West. People think Buddhism is a religion in the West, but for us it's a science. It's a study of life. You can be a scientist and a filmmaker - there's nothing special about that. Buddhism uses the image like science, and film is a more modern method."

Mr. Norbu, whose ecclesiastical title is H.E. Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, was recognized at the age of 7 as the reincarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wango, a religious reformer and a saint in the 19th century. Trained in philosophy in Bhutan and India, he is also a teacher who discovered his love of film while watching television at 13, later experiencing cinema for the first time in Europe.

"I discovered Stayajit Ray, who is an Indian director I was very much inspired by," Mr. Norbu says. "By then I was already in Europe teaching. I went to study and teach Buddhist philosophy. I snuck out of my class to watch the films, and this is where I had the inspiration."

While researching 1994's Little Buddha, director Bernardo Bertolucci heard about Mr. Norbu, and the lama's introduction into the secular world of moviemaking was complete.

"When he was developing the script for Little Buddha, he heard there was a Tibetan lama who was crazy about film. He knew it was the best chance to develop [Little Buddha], so he asked me to be a consultant. I haven't been to film school properly. Being an apprentice with Bernardo Bertolucci was my first introduction to a major production, and I'm sure I learned a lot unconsciously, but technically I have so many things to learn."

By the next year he completed his first short film, the 24-minute Video Hi-8 Ette Metto, which explored village life in Bhutan. This was followed by the six-minute short The Big Smoke, a storyteller's story. Both remain unreleased.

For Mr. Norbu's The Cup, which opened Friday, he chose a true story as his inspiration. It focuses on young monks in an Indian monastery who are obsessed with soccer. The film's character of Geko, the disciplinarian of the monastery, is the most like Mr. Norbu, he says.

"I did a little bit of work at a disciplinarian school next door to the monastery," he says. "I discovered young monks sneaking out to catch the football. Later, I had several ideas, but this was the most feasible to make financially."

Mr. Norbu took five years to raise the money required for The Cup, which eventually took six months to shoot at the Chokling Monastery in a Tibetan refugee settlement at the foothills of the Himalayas. The cast (including young actor Jamyang Lodro, who plays soccer-obsessed Orgyen) were drawn from monastery members, most of whom had no acting experience or fluency in English - even though Mr. Norbu wrote his script in English and passed out pages the day before the scenes were to be shot.

As far as Mr. Lodro's standout performance, which recalls the sweetly delinquent tough adolescents of '30s films such as Dead End, the filmmaker says it came naturally.

"When I wrote the script, I had him [Mr. Lodro] in mind. Also, he does this kind of thing anyway, so he really didn't have to act much."

If the cast is in danger of going Hollywood (the director admitted "some of them said they need to do it again"), rest assured that the dichotomy between Tinseltown and the Tibetan way of life isn't what it used to be. In Mr. Norbu's vision, there is room for following a Buddhist life and still cheering for a World Cup game.

"Many people in the West think that lamas are gods - they don't eat, they don't drink, they don't watch football. Maybe what I wanted was to demystify that a little bit," he says. "The Buddhist way of life comes from the union of elegance and outrageousness: One has to be elegant because one has to fit in society. But if you go to extremes, you have to be outrageous so you're not a slave to society."

What we can learn from watching The Cup is something Mr. Norbu says is inherent in Buddhism and the Eastern way of life, and (one could argue) something inherent in the film business as well.

"Orderly chaos is maybe what's to be learned from the East."