Module Ten - Video Reviews

This module was centered around the many religious and cultural movements of Africa, Asia, India and the Middle East.  Given the choice of a few videos to pick from I quickly selected two that interested me.  Buddhism - Heaven on Earth and Chinese Art: Treasures of the National Palace Museum.  Buddhism has always been an interest of mine but I never took the time to dig into the details and this was a perfect opportunity to do just that.  And I enjoy most thing influenced by the Chinese culture and really wanted to see their art through the ages.

Buddhism: Heaven on Earth
This was a nice video that walked through the creation of the religion quickly.  The start up of the lifestyle was a bit unusual but what was more unusual was how the birth place of the whole idea is one of the places it is least practiced.  Also that the religion split after the death of Buddha.  The main idea was how the search for inner peace and serenity was used to decorate every shrine and monument for the cause.  The peacefulness of the lifestyle really speaks out when you see the artwork and architecture.  The text and the video were almost exactly the same with regards to the concepts and ideas behind the religion.  This video just walked us through the spreading of its ideas and how each area took the inspiration their own way without straying far from the original concept.  This film was done well and was typical of this learning style film series.  It was short but it packed in the details.

Chinese Art: Treasures of the National Palace Museum
This video was awful.  Sadly it was also 42 minutes long.  It was literally an auction style video that would display a call number like "F209197" then go into some small detail on the item.  To make matters worse the narrator sounded like a robot!  I started this thing over once to make sure I had the right video and a second time because I jumped forward to see if anything changes, nope.  Just 30+ items and a description of the pieces.  I did at least get to see some nice pieces and get an idea of how Black Glazed tea bowls were used to show off light teas and under glazed blue was used to add depth to drawings.  Item F209197 was actually a cool piece, a two layer vase where the inner layer could spin independent of the outer layer and the outer layer had reserves open for the inner layer scenes to pass through.  Was a cool idea.  I could not get past the layout of this video and honestly learned little from this.  There were some high points on how the colors were used and manipulated by kiln temperature but the items went by quickly and the facts even quicker.

All in all I should have gone with another video but sadly after the beating I took from the Chinese Art piece I could not bear to go any further.