screening: fpn's "35 Seconds- Short Stories from Haiti"

My documenteur friend and his co-conspirators went down to Haiti a few months ago to bring back some stories from the folks drastically and tragically affected by the earthquake.  The result is this 13 min. doc about the 35 seconds of crisis: literally the fault-line between normal and the rest of their lives.  Amidst some heartbreakingly beautiful photography and music, there  are some surprising accounts (in Creole, subtitled in English) of just what went through some folks' heads when their world came crashing down and glimmers of hope for a people and a country rebuilding from the rubble.

http://www.fleshprofitsnothing.com/

http://erichires.com/

http://nathanblewis.com/

jamming: Mumford and Sons- The Cave

I can't really get enough of any part of this:

"So come out of your cave walking on your hands
And see the world hanging upside down
You can understand dependence
When you know the Maker's land"

screening: Spoken Word, Preaching Visuals, & Prophetic Jesterdom

Topics from today's preaching class:

Spoken word poetry as embodying and unleashing the Word.

Anis Mojgani performs Shake the Dust at HEAVY AND LIGHT. from To Write Love on Her Arms. on Vimeo.

Using visual media to deliver and enhance the message.

Lump (Rob Bell - Nooma)

Using humor/satire/fable as a subversive, prophetic, surprising alternative.

mewithoutYou - The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie from David Bell on Vimeo.

Screening: Sad Santa

Advent season, at it's best, forces us to make room for the manger-born Messiah (the God-man) whose birth was foretold by an angel to a virgin in a backwoods Middle-Eastern town. Bearing the ridiculousness of each part of that last sentence in mind, we might do well during this time to look upon casual things which we normally would take for granted through a bit more of a critical (but ultimately sensitive) lens. When we do this, the lustre often fades, the appeal is fleeting, and the foolish things shame the wise (1 Cor 1:27).

I present to you, not a smeared portrayal of Santa, making obvious what you are supposed to feel; but rather a realistic and infinitely more unsettling imaging of a symbol of something much larger. Could we use this technique more? Instead of tactlessly calling idols out, might we powerfully but subtly reveal these untruths for the disappointing counterfeits they are; trusting the Spirit and letting people figure it out for themselves?

www.theworkofthepeople.com/

screening: JJ Alvaro's Confession

Confession from John Jay Alvaro on Vimeo.

The text is from a Mennonite worship service for the Iraq War. The images are edited from originals online. The music is Feist.

screening: Regina Spektor- Laughing With

screening: Man From Plains; Bigger, Faster, Stronger; Son of Rambow

Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains
This Jonathan Demme documentary focuses on Former President Carter's book tour for the controversial book on Palestine & Apartheid. Being born under the Reagan administration and due to the apparent unpopularity of Carter following his only term, I had little to no knowledge about the man. The doc reveals a candid, genuine, relentlessly active, and graciously peace-seeking man. Perhaps the most gratifying moments come when he is asked about his wife, of whom he beams with affection, or when we see his yound publicist scramble to keep up with such an old timer as he builds Habitat homes, grants endless interviews, flys around the country in coach seating, teaches bible study at his church in Americus, or attends a pig-picken. Carter must forever beheld as the gold-standard for post-term presidential activity.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster
This gem of a documentary features the rare blend of satire and sarcasm along with honesty and charity. Exploring not only the Western (mostly American, but also Ben Johnson) fascination with and dependence on steriods and their benefits. The director details he and his bookend brothers' childhoods and their divergent paths to strength and fitness (his brothers chose roids, he despises them). He remembers watching Hulk Hogan intently as he was promised all of his childhood dreams as long as he ate right, exercised, and said his prayers. The film's fulcrum is not on some sort of demonozation of anabolic steriods but rather an examination of why we do what we do and why what we say we value and what we actually do tend to play out quite differently. Quite a provocative and enjoyable watch for sports fan or social psychologist alike.

Son of Rambow
I wouldn't have initially said that I would have shed a few tears at a movie combining the brit-innocence of Millions with the playfullness of Be Kind Rewind, but I did. This charming little indie film portrays the Plymouth Brethren raised (and repressed) Will and his blood brotherhood with the mischievious Lee Carter (his full name is always said by Will). Both kid actors are engaging, subtle, and hilarious. The script is imaginative and interesting. And the final product of their "Screen Test Contest" sequal to Rambo: First Blood, is brilliant. I have such an affection for sweet, simple, creative movies like this. You walk away with great appreciation for what you actually saw and the questions raised, rather than all the distractions and cheap short-cuts taken with blockbuster actors and cookie cutter plots.

screening: Synecdoche, NY; Doubt; Diving Bell & The Butterfly

Synecdoche, NY
First of the 2 Phillip Seymour Hoffman films. I didn't really appreciate the scattered and seemingly pretentious musings of Charlie Kaufman. It had all of the weirdness of his other ones without the charm and humor. Maybe I just missed it altogether or maybe I turned it off too soon, either way, though I really looked forward to this one, I was heartily disappointed.

Doubt
Awesome. Hoffman utterly redeemed himself. Streep and Adams were perfect. This really strummed the right note of my parochial school upbringing. I highly recommend this one mostly for its acting and ability to leave a sticky ethical situation to the viewer's imagination, and it's final conclusion that that imagination and those things left unsaid is perhaps the harshest judge of reality. No need to be explicit when you can craft a complex story and characterization, which in the end teaches at a deeper and longer-lasting level.

Here is a great clip of Hoffman at his best, behind the pulpit in a good ole fashioned Irish-Catholic homiletic attack:


Diving Bell & The Butterfly
If the first movie was too weird for me, and Doubt was perfect in its subtlety, DB&B broached some middle ground (in French) while expanding towards an abstract and non-linear presentation akin to movies like 'Big Fish' & 'What Dreams May Come'. For starters, the story is so brilliant that it could only be non-fiction: playboy Elle' magazine editor suffers a stroke leaving him essentially locked in his own body unable to translate his brilliant, literary mind and faculties through any other channel than a single eye's blink. But it is through this sharp mind and speech therapist's 'Morse code' system that he dictates an entire transcript. The result is a melancholy and poignant narrative monologue plumbing the depths of his condition via a diving bell and soaring to the heights of love and imagination on the wings of a Butterfly. Particularly resonant scenes were the Madonna of Lourdes scene and the shaving scene with his senile father.

screening: As We Forgive

This Laura Waters Hinson film was screened this past week by the Div School (Center for Reconciliation & Anglican/Episcopal House of Studies) and All Saints AMiA Church. Ironically, this coming week, Holy Week, marks the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

Strewn throughout this scant 1 hour film were several poignant quotes, here are a few:

Voltaire: “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
Tolstoy: "Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace."
Tutu: "You can't undo anything you've already done, but you can face up to it. You can tell the truth. You can seek forgiveness. And then let God do the rest."
R. Niebuhr: "Forgiveness is the final form of love."

Perhaps the strongest part of this film was its concreteness. There are far more comprehensive and much more effective and affective representations of this and other genocidal aftermaths. This one was actually able to show the process, with all its discomfort, of someone knocking on the door of a neighbor whose family they brutally murdered, to say sorry.

Some of the crucial take-aways of this for me, things that I hope God will continue to illuminate and refine in me, are:
-How the disconnect in our Western society disallows for this messy and clumsy process. I wrong someone or someone wrongs me, and I or they may chose never to deal with it again. In these Rwandan villages, it comes as a difficult thing to avoid dealing with this pain and forgiveness process. What a pity for us.
-The churches' compliance in this matter. History has shown time and time again (apartheid, Holocaust, racism/slavery, exploitation), how Christ's own body has compromised itself. It is interesting and convicting which tact the local Rwandan churches have taken in owning or denying their offenses.
-The pathos needed to take part in the forgiveness process. How often am I unable to feel, understand, and empathize with the daily minor hurts I cause my wife, family, and those around me. As a disciple of Christ, who took on flesh and emptied himself into the form of a servant (Phil 2), I must become a student of empathy.
-The goal of reconciliation by government. Inspiring and disturbing. Inspiring that places like South Africa and Rwanda had pioneered this process, through government channels to achieve healing, unity, and truthfulness. Disturbing that so-called advanced nations like our own are unable and virtually unwilling to recognize the merit in such an approach to handle our collective sins.

Finally, in the panel discussion in Chapel Hill on Friday night... Rector Steve Breedlove mentioned an episode from his last visit to Rwanda. He eloquently showed the universality of the human condition and our capacity for evil. He described riding in a bus, reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which tells of America's narrow dodging of genocide in the new west, next to a German national living in the shadows and repercussions of the Holocaust in her land, while trucking through a land with blood still in the soil and pain still on the residents' faces. The ability to kill God's creatures doesn't belong solely to one group, place, or time.

It is during Lent and Holy week that I can shamefully, and repentantly admit that:
"...in my best behavior/
I am really just like him/
Look beneath the floorboards/
For the secrets I have hid." -Sufjan Stevens John Wayne Gacy, Jr

screening: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button/Slumdog Millionaire

We went and saw Benjamin Button on Christmas Day in Indy and Slumdog Millionaire on New Year's Day back in Chapel Hill.

Both of these movies were striking in their own distinct ways. First, Benjamin Button...

While this nearly 3 hour movie dragged for some (really everyone but me; I will not apologize for being a sucker for a nice character-driven film), the premise was fresh and the characters were interesting. I'll admit it smacked a little of Forrest Gump-meets-Simon Birch-with-a-tinge-of Titanic. Aside from those obvious associations, I enjoyed the way it commented on the selfless love Brad Pitt's character was required to give due to his oddity. Button's "birth defect" made him look beyond age and exterior and not only allowed a seeming octogenarian to fall in love with a pre-teen (seen in a poignant but somewhat creepy flashlight fort meeting while the rest of the house slept), but to maintain that unassuming and sacrificial love even when the tables were turned. The fact that the main story took place in an old folks home in New Orleans had several resonances. The contrast (and sometimes irrelevance) of age along with the hurting, destructed, and grotesquely beautiful cityscape during its modern flooding set the tone for the whole film. On a side note, Brad Pitt firmly places himself in a James Dean/Paul Newman type, iconic role for our generation with this one. I can't really think of anyone else that is that guy who is charming and attractive enough for the women to crush, while being tough, cool, and witty enough for guys (like myself) to admire or at least archetype him as the American man.

Now Slumdog Millionaire...

In indie (& Indian) movie featuring unknown (to us) Bollywood actors about love and loss and 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' doesn't exactly seem like a great way to spend an afternoon or 7 bucks. On the contrary, Danny Boyle masterfully weaves a story, with great technique (cinematography was brilliant), deep characters that you actually care about, and a tight, interesting storyline.

One striking element to this movie was how it was able to show the dichotomy of modern India without being overly polemic or forceful. There was an over-arching theme of old vs. new- poverty vs. wealth- virtuous brother vs. ambitious brother. In a time in which the sub-continent with some of the most dense population tries to vie for global influence- we see this zeitgeist not in newsprint or soundbite but in the unfailing love of a slumdog 'chai wallah' and the wisdom and experience gained from his seemingly 'mis-fortunate' past. The destiny of Jamal is certainly a microcosm for the fate of India. Perhaps, "It is written."