Religious Leaders Respond to Noah: Moving and Inspiring

Posted on March 21, 2014 at 5:43 pm

Christian leaders are responding warmly to “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe. I have not seen the film yet, but was moved by the response of my friend Rebecca Cusey, who has, unlike many of the people who have been complaining about it. She writes:

I was never bored in this film. I was never embarrassed because it became too corny or trite or simplistic or unprofessional. Both those happen in Christian subculture movies. But this isn’t a Christian subculture movie. It’s a mainstream movie with deep theological themes.

It is just a good movie, a good movie made for everyone, that happens to be based on a Bible story….

The film differs from religious movies we all know in that the viewer doesn’t feel browbeaten at the end, forced to either accept or reject some theological point of contention. Rather, it opens questions and lets them linger. For all its talk of Creator, creation, and sin, it never preaches.

Ultimately, the movie explores hope versus despair, mercy in tension with justice, second beginnings. It is dark, but the darkness makes the clearing skies all the more lovely. It is a work of art and one that I recommend seeing, for believers and nonbelievers alike.

This is just what I was hoping for, a movie that begins a conversation that will open hearts to a deeper connection to the divine. I’ll report back when I see the film.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Interview: Bishop T.D. Jakes Talks About the New Faith and Family Film Festival

Posted on August 1, 2013 at 8:00 am

Bishop T.D Jakes, who serves on the board of Beliefnet, has added a Faith and Family Film Festival to his inspirational MegaFest gathering, this year taking place in Dallas on August 29-31. Bishop Jakes spoke to me about why film is so important in providing spiritual enlightenment and what his plans are for this inaugural event.

What made you decide to bring movies to MegaFest?

The International Faith and Family Film Festival is one component of MegaFest, a huge event we have every year for families to come and to worship and have an opportunity to go to enrichment classes and more. This year it extends from comedy shows to Oprah’s Life Class on families and fatherhood and how we can strengthen fathers and what women can do when there is no father in the home. We’re covering a wide range of things and in the midst of that is the Faith and Family Film Festival. I’m interested in that because I have a for-profit business that produces faith and family entertainment. Some of the discussions will be about marketing within the faith-based community, the now and future of faith-based films and TV, getting your film and TV production launched, digital filmmaking distribution and marketing. And we’re going to have actors there like Anthony Mackie, Regina King, and a host of others. William Morris, the agency will be there, and Sony Pictures.

What is is about film that connects so powerfully with people?

Christ conveyed truth through the telling of stories. Today we use film to convey stories. We can do it in an entertaining way, a comedic way, a dramatic way and still be able to interject truth and faith so that people are stirred in their thinking and moved to worship and perceive God differently. I realize there are more people in the theater on Friday night than there are in the pews on Sunday morning. If you are going to reach the world, we have to go where the world is.

What films will you be showcasing?

One I am really excited about is “Black Nativity.” I’m serving as a producer on that one. It’s a star-studded cast — Jennifer Hudson, Tyrese, Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett. Jennifer Hudson will be at the MegaFest event. We’re so excited about that film, which will be out for the holiday season. We have a film about Winnie Mandela, the love story of Winnie and Nelson with the background of apartheid. Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard star in that one and it will debut at the festival. My company with Sony is working on “Heaven is for Real,” shooting now in Canada, based on the book about the child who came out of an operation and said he had been to heaven and had all of this information he would have no way of knowing. That will be out at Easter time, but there will be a sneak peek of it at the festival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzr0wUqhAz0

Why is it so hard for Hollywood to get the message that there is an audience for uplifting films?

I think they are starting to get it. But it is true that there are people in some of those top offices there who are out of touch with mainstream America. It’s an education process. But when you see the success of “The Bible,” quadrupling the ratings at the History Channel — Hollywood is starting to get the message. That begins to tug on their hearts. When people like Tyler Perry and I interweave faith into our movies, it has been very, very well-received. This is an opportunity for us to let Hollywood know that we are here. And we will develop entertainment that is suitable for the audiences who will support that entertainment.

What kind of turnout are you expecting?

This is our first event in Dallas, so we do not know, but in Atlanta we had over 290,000 people and broke all records over the two years we were there. Thousands of people from all over the world have already registered. Where else can you go in the world and see that many people with their families sharing their faith? And faith is infectious. When you see others, it stirs your faith as well.

What movie spoke to you when you were growing up?

This really dates me. “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston, sitting in front of the TV set, going “ooo” and “ahh.” I remember “Imitation of Life.” We watched it every year and my father would get teary-eyed. That was a rare thing! I would love to get the rights to do a remake. It tears your heart. It shows the importance of family. I think you learn as much from people’s struggles, maybe more, than you do from their successes. The real strength of the power of God is the struggles that we have in life and how we overcome them.

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Festivals Interview Spiritual films

The Adjustment Bureau

Posted on March 3, 2011 at 5:54 pm

The first great movie of 2011 is thought-provoking, exciting, and swooningly romantic. Writer/director George Nolfi takes on the biggest questions of all — faith and doubt, fate and free will, God, love, the meaning of existence — with an absorbing story about who we are and why we do what we do.

Matt Damon plays David Norris, a popular politician with a bad habit of losing control that has just cost him an election. As he gets ready to deliver a safe and appropriate concession speech, he has a brief meeting with a young woman and feels an immediate connection. And then he gives the concession speech and it is frank and outspoken and of course, appealing to the voters who find his candor refreshing. His political prospects are bright again, but he can’t stop thinking about the girl.

We’re used to seeing people, especially people in power, surrounded by fixers, arrangers, smoothers, tweakers — publicists, managers, agents, advisers, lawyers. David has those, including his best friend/campaign manager. But there is something different going on. There are men in hats giving each other odd directions with a strangely compelling sense of urgency, as though they are organizing a rocket launch. But why would someone be deployed to spill coffee on David’s shirt?

To keep him off a bus, for one reason (though the deeper reason will not be revealed for a while). But the coffee isn’t spilled in time. He gets on the bus. And the girl from election night is there. Her name is Elise (Emily Blunt). She is a dancer. And David is besotted with her.

The men in hats are from an Adjustment Bureau. They have enormous power and a secret system of doorways that allow them to bypass miles in a few steps. The hat men step out of the doorways like a less cheery version of the minions who keep things running smoothly at Disney World.

The Adjustment Bureau doesn’t want David and Elise to be together, and they are acting on the highest authority. But even that authority cannot stop the most powerful force in the universe.

A knockout cast and imaginative visuals provide a sumptuous setting for the romance. Anthony Mackie, moving with the graceful economy of a cheetah, is the Adjuster who has come to care for his charge. Other Adjusters include “Mad Men’s” John Slattery as a harried bureaucrat and Terence Stamp as the ruthless enforcer brought in when all else has failed. Damon makes David intelligent, brave, sensitive, vulnerable, curious, and great-hearted, and Blunt makes Elise everything a man like that would be willing to risk it all for. There are a few surprising rough edges for such a well-crafted story. Elise’s reason for being in the men’s room where she meets David for the first time is oddly off-putting, a loose end that is never explained. And a story David tells about his political inspiration would have to have occurred about 15 years before he was born, unless he is the youngest-looking baby boomer in history. But what does work in this movie works exceptionally well, a bracing engagement with the reason for everything that gives us a good reason to remember this movie for a long time.

(more…)

Christian Film-makers Find Their Audience

Posted on February 26, 2009 at 8:00 am

NPR has an excellent column by Barbara Bradley Hagerty about the increasing success of faith-inspired films. The San Antonio (Texas) Independent Christian Film Festival in January attracted more than 2000 audience members. And “Fireproof” has made more money than “Slumdog Millionaire,” produced for $500,000 and earning $33 million.

Instead of just complaining about sex and violence, Phillips says, Christians must make films that reflect their own values. He says he started the film festival five years ago when he realized that Christians were losing the hearts and minds of the young.

“What is the single biggest influence on our families?” he asks. “I wish I could tell you the biggest single influence were churches, but that regretfully is not the case. The truth of the matter is, it is the media the people take in which are shaping and forming ideas.”

If Christians want to compete in the world of ideas, he says, they have to make great movies. This festival is putting up a $101,000 top prize — the largest in the United States, and larger than Cannes or Sundance — to help them get there. Phillips says this is only the beginning.

The winner of that award is a movie called “The Widow’s Might,” a timely story about a community support for a woman who lost her home to a foreclosure. It was written and directed by its star, 19-year-old John Robert Moore.
This is all enormously encouraging. I hope that the combination of spiritual and financial returns from producing films with messages of faith, hope, compassion, and integrity will inspire the production of more films for people of faith.

Religious Leaders Respond to Noah: Moving and Inspiring

Looking for Movies to Inspire You?

Interview: Bishop T.D. Jakes Talks About the New Faith and Family Film Festival

The Adjustment Bureau

Christian Film-makers Find Their Audience