God and Film, Part Deux

(Article that appeared in the Tucket on 04/26/09, repeated here for your convenience…)

God & Film Part II class blurb, or: Why are they showing movies at church, anyway??

For over a year, I’ve been hosting movie nights, showing a variety of films at Grace & Peace. Some of you may still be wondering why. Granted, most of these films have not fallen under the banner of cinematic material that one may expect from a typical church movie night (that being, in my opinion, biblical adaptations, or blatantly philosophical works). The films of the past year have included primarily mainstream Hollywood fare, carefully chosen to span the popular genres. This rejection of the expected and embracing of the secular has been a conscious attempt to lead participants to encountering these finely crafted films on the films’ own terms. From there, we can better free ourselves of much of the mental baggage we bring to outside works when presented in a church setting, and try to find God’s fingerprints in the celluloid. How successful I’ve been at this may be debatable, but the bottom line still stands: film is a vital and valid means of cultural communication in our world, and one that the Lord can and will use to further his truths, often in spite of non-Christian worldviews on behalf of the filmmakers themselves. God will prevail in all things, especially the movies.

Which brings us to now. After a year of running the domestic genre gamut, and delving heavily into film history, technique, and yes, trivia, we have reached the bridge. The new eight week class, entitled “God & Film, Part II: Where’s God?” begins Sunday May 3, at 9:15 AM in the Blue Room. This is where we throw open the floodgates of World Cinema and less conventional forms of filmmaking (the “blatantly philosophical works”) – The silent era, German expressionism, Italian neorealism, animation – the list of vital subcategories goes on. While we will continue to deal with the likes of film language and history (if nothing else, you’re getting an encapsulated college level film history & theory classes for free, and without term papers), my hope is to biblically explore these more difficult cinematic waters in a more communal manner. While last year’s class will be referred to, it should not be viewed as a pre-requisite for this one – although all the audio podcasts of the first God & Film class are available at graceandpeacefellowship.org.

Like last year, the continuing Sunday evening Grace & Peace Film Series will go weekly for the duration of the class, showing films in conjunction with the weekly morning topics. Participation in the class is not mandatory to attend the films, or vice versa, but when experienced together, a more complete picture will result. Please make plans to join us in this ambitious eight week endeavor with our first class next week on May 3 at 9:15 AM, and the film “Citizen Kane” that night at 6:30 PM.