Theologian, educator and filmmaker Craig Detweiler is fond of comparing the voices of modern day filmmakers to historical roles that are taken in scripture at various times: that of the pastoral and the prophetic. The pastoral voice, in narrative, message and practice seeks to “comfort the afflicted.” The prophetic voice, borrowing from Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination, seeks to “afflict the comfortable.”  The message that comforts the afflicted is usually the good news of the gospel, providing hope and comfort to those that may not have it so good in this life. Hope, as theologian N.T. Wright often puts it, that God through Christ will set the world right, that he will not only fulfill his promise to redeem the individual, forgive sins and draw us to himself after this life, but that in some sense God seeks to work towards the redemption of all things even in this life. This is a message that replaces despair with hope, and tells us that, somehow, no matter how dark it seems (in the “valley of the shadow of death”), that at the end of the day, it is all going to be okay. This is a message based, not necessarily on […]

Composer Mark Orton talks in this video about the art of scoring a film. He’s currently working on a documentary. “All you have to do to understand the power of music in film, is watch to watch a scene without music. It feels like screen eternity. You put the right theme, the right music behind it, it can be exciting, it can be reflexive, it can be all these different things, but the time really changes.” https://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/film-music-score-composition-mark-orton/

An earlier post was about Mark Rothko and his ideas about the purpose of modern art. Here’s his son, Christopher on his father’s legacy. Art, he says, can be a gift that allows us to think more deeply about the big questions in life, why are we hear, what it means to be alive, and what the truly important things are in life. https://www.opb.org/television/video/rothko-sharing-the-legacy/

For years people pointed to The Battle of San Pietro as a great example of observational filmmaking, until it came out that Huston had staged most of the events in the film. Like the controversy surrounding Nanook of the North, many were disappointed when they learned the truth about the circumstances behind the filming. However, staged or not, the tone of the piece is very somber, and Huston refrains from reaching for answers, instead choosing to dwell on the apparent senselessness of war. The film represents another step for Huston, away from propaganda towards a style of filmmaking that would challenge the status quo. When Huston finally finished the film, he showed it to a gathering of senior military staff and generals. As Harris puts it, “Still badly shaken by the loss of life he had seen in Italy, he had chosen to make a documentary that was true to his emotional experience, a film that emphasized the terrible cost of the Allied campaign in Italy,” instead of the feel-good story of the triumphant battle that Capra had wanted. At one point, he’d included some shots of dead American soldiers, and rather than use the reassuring voice of the narrator, […]

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on,” Rothko said in 1957. “The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” https://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/mark-rothko-portland-oregon-art-abstract/#.WuRe1ZaxvF1.twitter

The quality of documentary film in festival line-ups all over the country is incredible right now. For example, take a look at the list of interesting and inspiring films at this year’s Nantucket Film Festival. Minding the Gap is my favorite Sundance film this year. But I hear Brisbee ‘17 is also very good, and there are scores of others. There’s even a new film by Barbara Kopple who I write about in my book as an example of the exploration of the point of view style of cinema veritè back in the 70’s. Her new film: A Murder in Mansfield. http://nantucketfilmfestival.org/nff2018-films/documentaries/

Huston’s film about a battle in Italy called The Battle of San Pietro (1945) appears to be a straightforward depiction of a gruesome battle and an example of the many horrors that went on during the war. In the film, he begins with a simple interview of a soldier explaining the strategic objective of the battle of San Pietro, how both sides knew they needed to hold the city in order to control the valley, but also how they knew it was going to be a very bloody and costly fight. The rest of the film, again narrated by Huston himself, is a tragic memorial to the lives lost in the conflict, consisting of what seemed to be actual war footage. In his autobiography, Huston described the making of the film as a harrowing, death-defying enterprise in war photography, when in fact it was completely staged.   – from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock

At Sundance this year, one documentary stood out for me in terms of style, craft and heart. I picked Minding the Gap as my favorite 2018 Sundance documentary, and it ended up winning the jury award for breakthrough filmmaking. It’s winning awards all over the country now as it does it’s festiaval run, and director Bing Liu just got a nice write up in Variety. Check out the Variety piece here: http://variety.com/gallery/10-documentarians-to-watch-2018/ And my review of the film here: http://www.brehmcenter.com/initiatives/reelspirituality/film/reviews/minding-the-gap

I had the privilege of meeting Danny Huston on a film that I worked on in Atlanta, Georgia. I was curious if he’d talked to his father about his war films, and what he thought about Five Came Back. He said that yes, his father had talked about those years, and said that he felt that all his films, even though they were produced for the war department, ought to function as anti-war films. Famously, Huston had said that he’d be ashamed of himself if he ever made a pro-war film. However, his desire to portray the realities of war in a more visceral manner put him in conflict with his superiors (one of which was Capra). While he wanted to be more honest in one sense, he ended up, like Robert Flaherty, needing to stage events to accomplish this.   – from the upcoming book “How to Film the Truth: The Story of Documentary Film As a Spiritual Journey” to be released in the Summer of 2018 by Wipf & Stock

Because of this apparent shortcoming, other filmmakers of the time chose to deal with the war in a more sophisticated and nuanced way. As we shall see, these nuanced ways of looking at the war often had more to do with character than plot and perhaps more to do with confession than testimony. These films would allow the audience to get to know the people involved in the war and then leave space for them to draw their own conclusions. John Huston is perhaps the most notable example of this approach. He produced a similar set of documentaries during the war but often ran into trouble with the war department (perhaps, as we shall see, it was because he was ahead of his time). His first film after joining the service was called Report From The Aleutians, shot in 1943. In it, he chronicled a bombing mission by the Americans against the Japanese in a very straightforward manner; very similar to the way Capra utilized the expository style. He included the events of the mission and narrated the events himself, but also chose to focus on the men involved, the ex-farmers, ex-storekeepers and ordinary people that made up the American […]