religion

SoleJourney

by James McNally on May 19, 2009

in Documentaries,DVD

SoleJourney

SoleJourney (Directors: Kate Burns and Sheila E. Schroeder): I’ve admired the work of Rev. Dr. Mel White and the Soulforce organ­iz­a­tion for years now and this doc­u­mentary, par­tially funded by Soulforce, prom­ised to shed some light on the organization’s con­tinuing fight against the anti-gay agenda of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organ­iz­a­tion. Unfortunately, the film comes up short for a number of reasons.

First and fore­most, it’s not ter­ribly clear what the main focus of the film is. The title itself con­fused me until I real­ized it was refer­ring to the 1000 Watt March, a Soulforce “action” in which GLBT fam­ilies marched from Denver to Colorado Springs (home to Focus on the Family), a dis­tance of 65 miles, in five-mile “relays.” But the march doesn’t even really enter into the film until about the halfway mark. For the first 30 minutes or so, we get some­thing closer to a his­tory of the begin­nings of Soulforce, and its con­nec­tion to the non-violent res­ist­ance philo­sophy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Although Rev. Dr. White does appear in the film, I didn’t feel there was enough of him for this to be con­sidered a real his­tory of his organ­iz­a­tion. Instead there were lots of news clips emphas­izing the media’s view that Focus on the Family is an influ­en­tial and important organ­iz­a­tion. I found this unne­ces­sary, and it seemed to unbal­ance the film and expose its lack of structure.

When we do get to the march itself, we simply get random shots of small groups of people walking along the highway, inter­spersed with some footage of their reg­ular family lives at home. Although these fam­ilies are def­in­itely worthy of having their stories told, I wanted more of the at-home stuff and less of the anti­cli­mactic “march” stuff. I even enjoyed the talking head inter­views more than the cov­erage of the march, although none of it seemed to ever coalesce into a larger whole. I found the soundtrack cloy­ingly sweet, too, although it def­in­itely con­trib­uted to the overall “inspir­a­tional” feeling I think the film­makers were aiming for.

Soulforce’s mis­sion is to combat “religion-based oppres­sion” of LGBT people but there was very little about the reli­gious basis of that oppres­sion. In that respect, I found the film com­pared quite unfa­vour­ably with Daniel Karslake’s For the Bible Tells Me So (review), which even used some of the same footage of the demon­stra­tions at Focus on the Family’s headquar­ters. That film also man­aged to fea­ture some LGBT fam­ilies in a sens­itive way, and I’d hoped that SoleJourney might have built upon the earlier film. Instead, I don’t think it will have much appeal to anyone who doesn’t already believe in what Soulforce is doing.

Official site of the film

6/10(6/10)

Tagged as: christianity, faith, homosexuality, humanrights, religion

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Beyond Our Ken

by James McNally on April 20, 2008

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Beyond Our Ken

Beyond Our Ken (2008, Directors: Melissa Maclean and Luke Walker): I knew this was going to be an inter­esting screening when I started to see leaf­lets in the hands of some of the audi­ence accusing the film­makers of slander and the film of being a fraud. The sub­ject of Beyond Our Ken is an Australian reli­gious move­ment called Kenja, founded in 1982 by Ken Dyers and his wife Jan Hamilton (the name is a com­bin­a­tion of their first names). Now, any move­ment that inspires intense per­sonal loy­alty to one person will often be labelled a cult, and Kenja is almost always referred to in this way in the Australian media. Over the years, the group and Ken Dyers in par­tic­ular have also been the sub­ject of invest­ig­a­tions into alleg­a­tions of child sexual abuse. Directors Maclean and Walker, fresh out of film school, wanted to show the world what Kenja was really about. Was it a cult? What do mem­bers actu­ally believe and prac­tice? Remarkably, they were able to gain intimate access to the group and con­ducted many inter­views with Dyers and Hamilton. They also inter­viewed many former and cur­rent mem­bers to see if the alleg­a­tions had any merit.

What struck me imme­di­ately while watching the film was how sim­ilar the cul­ture, beliefs and prac­tices of Kenja sound to Scientology (including the prac­tice of “energy con­ver­sion” which takes place in private ses­sions between two people, and the use of vocab­u­lary such as “pro­cessing,” “clear,” and “attached spirits”), and lo and behold, according to Wikipedia (granted, not author­it­ative), Dyers was a former Scientologist. His life and work had many par­al­lels with the life of L. Ron Hubbard, including a spotty mil­itary ser­vice record which was later exag­ger­ated for pat­ri­otic effect. The dir­ectors make no men­tion of these par­al­lels, per­haps out of fear of stir­ring up another organ­iz­a­tion, but I think it would have been inter­esting to see what rela­tion­ship exists between the two groups.

Kenja claims to teach a tech­nique for rid­ding a person of neg­ative thoughts and the body of “attached spirits” leading to a gen­eral state of well-being. But toward the end of the film, we wit­ness a com­plete melt­down by Dyers in which he rages about having to defend him­self against charges and alleg­a­tions for more than ten years. The master seems not to have learned from his own tech­niques. Tragically, after a fresh series of sexual abuse alleg­a­tions sur­faced, Dyers took his own life in July 2007, just around the time the film was being completed.

Far from being slan­derous, the film actu­ally seems to go out of its way to give Dyers, Hamilton, and other Kenja prac­ti­tioners time and space to explain them­selves. Clearly, how­ever, they were not happy with the final film, and actu­ally flew two of their mem­bers to Toronto to not only hand out leaf­lets, but to con­duct their own inform­a­tion ses­sion. It will be held Thursday April 24th at 7pm at the OISE Building, Room 2–211, 252 Bloor Street West. I’m hoping that the dir­ectors show up to that since the Kenja people were at the screening. In my recording of the Q&A, Luke Walker lets them ask their ques­tions at the end and I wish it had been able to go on longer. It’s a bit funny, too, that all the protests from Kenja mem­bers will prob­ably just pique people’s interest in the film and give it a wider audience.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ectors Melissa Maclean and Luke Walker from after the screening:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Duration: 16:14

Official site for the film
Trailer

Kenja’s response to the film. The trailers for their own “mock­u­mentary” seem par­tic­u­larly bizarre.

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs08, cults, religion, spirituality

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Audience of One

by James McNally on December 6, 2007 · 1 comment

in After Dark,Documentaries,Film Festivals

Audience of One

Audience of One (Director: Michael Jacobs): I’m finally reviewing this utterly unique doc­u­mentary that screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival way back in October. I was lucky enough to speak to the dir­ector by phone tonight and though my recording is (at this point) almost unus­able (crappy analog “phone taps”!!), I’ll try to work in some of the stuff we talked about into the review proper.

Richard Gazowsky is the pastor of the Voice of Pentecost church in San Francisco, and didn’t see his first movie until he was 40. But what an exper­i­ence it must have been, for soon after he dis­covered the joys of cinema, he exper­i­enced a “divine call” to make the greatest bib­lical epic ever. Audience of One fol­lows Gazowsky as he takes his con­greg­a­tion along on the almost incon­ceiv­able journey of making Gravity, a sci­ence fic­tion epic based on the bib­lical story of Joseph. Though he’s never dir­ected a film before, Gazowsky con­fid­ently takes the reins, and forms WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) Christian Film Works. Accustomed to dreaming big, he announces that Gravity will be shot in 70mm at 60 frames per second. Despite an all-volunteer cast and crew, the pro­duc­tion soon decamps to Italy for some loc­a­tion shooting. Many prob­lems ensue, from bad weather to mech­an­ical prob­lems to a gen­eral lack of pre­par­a­tion. Gazowsky presses on, con­fident that God wants him to com­plete the film.

Michael Jacobs’ camera cap­tures the drama over a period of 18 months, from the con­fident begin­ning through the trials of pro­duc­tion and finally to what appears to be Gazowsky’s very public melt­down. Throughout, the pastor seems like an affable man, albeit a little obsessed with the idea of being a film­maker. Mysteriously prom­ised European funding fails to mater­i­alize, the bills pile up and the erstwhile dir­ector becomes more and more para­noid, sus­pecting the major stu­dios of trying to steal his script. The whole enter­prise spins fur­ther out of con­trol and by the film’s end, it appears that Richard Gazowsky has painted him­self into a corner. His obses­sion is com­pounded by his faith that God wants him to devote his life to making this film.

Though it doesn’t shy away from the reli­gious aspects of Gazowsky’s “quest,” this is really a uni­versal char­acter study. We see the pastor’s mother, a preacher her­self who founded the church, haunting the pro­ceed­ings with a sad look on her face. “I never should have turned the church over to him,” she laments. Gazowsky is a familiar char­acter, reminding me of Klaus Kinski’s indelible Fitzcarraldo and Harrison Ford’s Allie Fox (from The Mosquito Coast). But in this case, Gazowsky’s pride is unas­sail­able since he claims to be doing God’s work. But it also means he can never admit he was wrong.

Jacobs told me that Gazowsky has sup­ported the film and even par­ti­cip­ated in some Q&A ses­sions after screen­ings. But instead of admin­is­tering a much-needed wake-up call, it seems to have re-energized him to con­tinue raising funds to com­plete the film. Despite the immense amount of time and money spent already, only two scenes have been com­pleted, and although they weren’t shown in the film, Jacobs prom­ises to include them on the DVD release.

It seems ironic that, des­pite the title of his film being Gravity, nothing seems to be able to bring Richard Gazowsky back down to earth.

Official site for the film

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: After Dark, christianity, Documentaries, religion, scifi

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For The Bible Tells Me So

by James McNally on October 14, 2007 · 1 comment

in Doc Soup,Documentaries,Film Festivals,Theatrical Release

For The Bible Tells Me So
Editor’s Note: Doc Soup is a monthly doc­u­mentary screening pro­gramme run by the good folks at Hot Docs. It gives audi­ences in Toronto (and now Calgary and Vancouver!) their reg­ular doc fix each year from the fall through to the spring, leading up to the Hot Docs fest­ival itself.

For The Bible Tells Me So (Director: Daniel Karslake): This doc­u­mentary came to my atten­tion through Joel Heller’s excel­lent site Docs That Inspire, before it played at Sundance this past January. The film explores the inter­sec­tion of homo­sexu­ality and reli­gion, par­tic­u­larly among con­ser­vative Christians, and as such, it tackles a sub­ject near and dear to me. I spent many years immersed in the evan­gel­ical sub­cul­ture and went through the very painful coming-out exper­i­ence of a close friend. This is exactly the sort of film I wish we’d had in the early 90s. Through the exper­i­ences of five Christian fam­ilies, each with a gay or les­bian child, we watch as real people struggle to integ­rate their love for their fam­ilies with their own beliefs and exper­i­ences. But this isn’t the typ­ical con­front­a­tional sort of film many of us have seen before. Instead, we meet clergy who have wrestled hon­estly with what the Bible says, and who are able to recon­cile their faith with accept­ance of gay and les­bian people. It’s gut-wrenching stuff, and not everyone will be con­vinced by the theo­logy, but at least it gets people dis­cussing the meaning of the dis­puted bib­lical pas­sages, rather than just quoting them.

I par­tic­u­larly liked that not all the fam­ilies are the same. Some still struggle to accept what they per­ceive to be their child’s “sinful” life­style, while others have gone on to polit­ical act­ivism (in some cases, even to the point of being arrested!). Karslake has made a very wise choice by adopting the name of a par­tic­u­larly obstinate opponent of gay rights, Focus on the Family, as his theme. By focus­sing on the real fam­ilies and exper­i­ences of gay people, he removes much of the appre­hen­sion and fear of straight people, espe­cially reli­gious straight people. I loved the way he intro­duced each family by having the par­ents explain how they them­selves met and fell in love. It showed us that attrac­tion and romance are at the root of all of our fam­ilies, and that the rela­tion­ships of gay people are really not much dif­ferent than anyone else’s.

If I have any mis­giv­ings about the film, they are rel­at­ively minor. One is the use of a short anim­ated seg­ment to try to explain some of the recent sci­entific research around homo­sexu­ality. I thought the tone was a little too self-consciously light-hearted and I thought the seg­ment was largely unne­ces­sary. The other quibble was that earlier in the film, Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson is (right­fully) called out for com­paring advoc­ates of gay mar­riage to Hitler, but then later, actual footage of Hitler is used to describe the per­se­cu­tion of gay people. I don’t think you can have it both ways.

Nevertheless, this is a fair, gen­erous, and incred­ibly moving por­trait of real people trying to recon­cile their deepest-held beliefs with their very iden­tities of them­selves or of those closest to them. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I was moved to tears sev­eral times. Despite that, I think it’s a film that would move others who are per­haps not quite so close to the issues. My wife and I have a run­ning joke. We’ve got the great idea that if only fun­da­ment­alist Christians and gay people could actu­ally meet each other instead of hurling insults across the divide, much under­standing and even recon­cil­a­tion could be achieved. I’ve offered to hold a series of dinner events called “Fags and Fundies” to which we could invite quite a few of our friends. I think I’ve found the per­fect film to get the dis­cus­sion started.

NOTE: The film is showing in various venues in the US in the coming months, but so far, there are no Toronto screening dates. Check the film’s site for any changes, and look for a DVD release in the coming months.

UPDATE (January 9, 2008): The film’s Toronto premiere will be tonight at the Bloor Cinema as part of the Doc Soup pro­gramme. Director Daniel Karslake will be in attend­ance. Screenings at 6:30pm and 9:15pm.

Official web site of the film

Docs That Inspire’s Joel Heller inter­views dir­ector Daniel Karslake

Soulforce, an organ­iz­a­tion of gay and les­bian Christians and their straight allies fighting reli­gious bigotry

PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: christianity, Documentaries, homosexuality, religion, Theatrical Release

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Silent Light (Luz silenciosa)

by James McNally on September 11, 2007 · 3 comments

in DVD,Film Festivals,TIFF

Silent Light (Luz silenciosa)

Silent Light (Luz silen­ciosa) (Director: Carlos Reygadas): Another one of my pre­viewed films that made the final cut, Silent Light is a bit intim­id­ating to write about. Beginning with a stun­ning six minute shot of the sun rising over a Mennonite homestead, the film alerts us that it is going to require patience and a cer­tain sense of con­tem­pla­tion. And it estab­lishes right away that everything that fol­lows, the human story, is sec­ondary to the cycles of nature, to the cir­ca­dian rhythms of the nat­ural world, to the pulse of life that beats deep down in the earth and that echoes throughout the uni­verse. I’m sorry if I’m using high-flown lan­guage; it’s the effect of this strangely haunting film.

Johan is a simple farmer who’s lived his whole life among the Mennonites of northern Mexico. They don’t com­mu­nicate much with out­siders, and speak their own Plautdietsch dia­lect of German. He lives with his wife Esther (Canadian nov­elist Miriam Toews in a sur­prising role) and their large family. The film’s crisis comes when we learn that Johan has been car­rying on an affair with Marianne, another woman in the com­munity. He’s been honest about it with Esther from the begin­ning, and has tried to break it off, but deep in his heart he feels that Marianne is his “nat­ural woman” and that mar­rying Esther was a mis­take. Though he clearly loves her and his chil­dren, he’s torn by the power of his pas­sion for the other woman as well as his con­vic­tion that she is his intended match. Reygadas’ decision to use authentic Mennonite non-professionals has mixed res­ults. Though it’s clear that these are stoic people who use few words, in places the dia­logue still felt excess­ively mannered. He is able to achieve more with the camera than with any spoken dia­logue, and that’s where the film finds its emo­tional power.

The cine­ma­to­graphy and sound design are almost Dogme-like in their sim­pli­city, which makes the film’s climax all the more sur­prising for some. Without giving any­thing away, all I’ll say is that unlike many, I found it com­pletely nat­ural and moving in its sim­pli­city. And although this is sup­posedly a com­munity built on Christian faith, I found some­thing closer to pan­theism beating at its heart.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Carlos Reygadas from after the screening:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Duration: 23:58

Trailer
Official Site

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: adultery, christianity, faith, mennonites, mexico, religion, spirituality, TIFF

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