Mario Olckers

Chinlone – Burmese acrobatic ball game – mega awesome!!!

When I stayed in Burma (2001 – 2004), I had the opportunity to watch this amazing display of acrobatic skill and showmanship while travelling through the country as an ordained Buddhist monk from monastery to monastery. I got this in my Twine digest today, and you can see the write-up about the film Mystic Ball over here. I got my Twine invite only a couple of weeks ago, but it is the most valuable and high signal ratio social network out there to date. When you subscribe to groups or Twines around topics of interest, you always get a daily digest of all the high-value articles and links that has been Twined or shared by memebers who also belong to that group of Twines. Never has a day gone by that there was not a couple of articles that I clicked on to go read or save and share, mostly to do with Web Development, Open Source, Linux, Myanmar (Burma), Tibet, Buddhism, Social Networking, Semantic web 3.0, Twitter and WordPress . My Twine profile is over here. Please leave a comment or send me a mail if you would like me to send you a Twine invite, it is in invitation-only beta at the moment, but I have a couple of invites to share

From the website:

This lovely, lyrical documentary introduces Chinlone, a Burmese sport that soars somewhere between acrobatics, hackey sack, and Balinese dance. This game, unknown outside of Burma, became an obsession for Greg Hamilton. For the past 20 years he’s painfully tried to whisk the distinctive woven-rattan ball, faithfully returning to Burma to play in tournaments, becoming the first westerner to do so. What makes this film so rewarding is Hamilton’s candid autobiographical account of his slow learning. At first he is laughed at, but after 8 years of filming, he slowly gains respect from the Burmese. Chinlone is a beautiful non-competitive game. You “win” by keeping the ball in the air for your teammates — a fit metaphor for life, and a perfect frame for this extremely contemplative but dynamic film. Greg’s story is really not about sport, or the Zen of Burmese Hackey Sack, but about how to learn and love.

– KK