Saturday, February 16 at 9:30am to 12:00pm UH – University Hall, 1000 1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045 In a lecture on film ethics, a minister once asked his students: “up until 50 years ago, people learned values, ethics, morals, and spirituality through their sacred texts and clergy. Today, much of our culture learns about these things through the movies. How can we enhance our lives through a deeper understanding of this powerful media?” This... Read more
The 2013 Sundance Film Festival came to a close with an impressive list of award-winners. Of these, I saw and reviewed seven of them: “Circles” (review below), “The Square,” “Who is Dayani Cristal?“, “Crystal Fairy,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints?” and “Upstream Color.” According to the Sundance website, “The 2013 Sundance Film Festival presented 119 feature-length films, representing 32 countries and 51 first-time filmmakers (including 27 in competition), and 65 short films. These films were selected from a record 12,146 submissions (429 more... Read more
Ever since I was assigned to Los Angeles in 2002, I have wanted to come to the Sundance Film Festival. Colleagues and friends from Family Theater/Angelus Student Awards and Fuller Theological Seminary were making plans to attend and create some kind of event for students. In 2004, John and Ed Priddy, award-winning film producers, in collaboration with the above, began the Windrider Forum. They had discovered The Branch, a Christian church in Park City, and the pastor generously provided space — and... Read more
PBS always has something interesting waiting in the wings. This week, it will broadcast a trifecta of significant documentaries. “The Revisionaries” (Independent Lens) 10 p.m. Monday (check local listings) Of all the films I have seen from PBS’s Independent Lens series, “The Revisionaries” is the most unsettling. It confirms what I have heard and read over the last few years about the influence of fundamentalist Christians in public education through the narrow focus of creationism, or religious belief, over science... Read more
PARK CITY, Utah – On the day before she entered a Catholic boarding school in August 1967, as a 15-year-old who felt the call to be a nun, Rose Pacatte indulged in a final fling with the secular world. She went to the local drive-in to see “The Dirty Dozen.” While young Rose’s stirrings toward religious life had been inspired in part by films about nuns – “The Song of Bernadette,” “The Trouble with Angels” – she expected... Read more
As the films continue to premiere and the voting for audience awards moves forward, it occurs to me that Sundance is a place you don’t want to come unless you are willing to have your worldview questioned. Some will argue that Sundance has a reputation for a liberal agenda, and this is somewhat true if your lens is fixed on the political. But if your lens is made up of human stories about people’s ethical and moral choices as well... Read more
This is my first year at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and as I listen to people chatter in the lines, what I hear most often is, “I am a Sundance virgin.” OK, that fits. This Sundance trip came together after speaking with Dennis Coday, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, over breakfast at the Catholic Press Association’s conference last summer. His response to my proposal was, “Let’s go for it.” The reason I think Sundance is... Read more
I am at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT this week and have already seen several excellent films, some very good and a couple that were just fair. I will be posting about the films and the festival in the next few days. Nine years ago The Windrider Forum: Cinema in Coversation was inaugurated here and I will be participating in this as well. More later! Read more
In the months and years following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC and the crash of the fourth plane into a field in Pennsylvania, the CIA pursued Osama Bin Laden, the founder of the global terrorist network al-Qaeda who claimed responsibility for the events of September 11, 2001. At a secret “black site” an agent, Dan, interrogates a man named Ammar (Reda Kateb) suspected of having knowledge about Bin... Read more
As Hurricane Charlie bears down on Tampa, FL in 2004, 7 year-old Zach Bonner (Chandler Canterbury), his mom, Laurie (Anna Gunn), and big sister 16 year-old Kelley (Daveigh Chase), board up the house and lay in supplies to wait out the storm. But the storm changes direction leaving the Bonners will a lot of bottled water. When Zach sees on television the devastation in Punta Gorde, FL and learns that 20,000 people are homeless and suffering, he... Read more
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