Why We Go To Movies
I just got an e-letter from Brewing Culture. It's a DC-based non-profit led by Erik Lokkesmoe. Brewing Culture (BC) is a faith-based non-profit dedicated to creating, commissioning, and celebrating transcendent art and media.
I really resonate with BC because I think the church ought to be creating culture not just criticizing it. Michelangelo said, "Criticize by creating."
The church ought to be the most creative place on the planet.
The BC e-letter has a post that resonated with me on why we go to movies:
We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.
Screenwriter Robert McKee
I think that short films will become a preaching genre in the years to come. We need to redeem that medium and use it to communicate transcendent truth!
Part of the reason I'm so passionate about film is that I put my faith in Christ after watching a movie called The Hiding Place. God used that medium to help me understand the message. And it changed the trajectory of my life.
Here's a link to Brewing Culture.
I really resonate with BC because I think the church ought to be creating culture not just criticizing it. Michelangelo said, "Criticize by creating."
The church ought to be the most creative place on the planet.
The BC e-letter has a post that resonated with me on why we go to movies:
We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.
Screenwriter Robert McKee
I think that short films will become a preaching genre in the years to come. We need to redeem that medium and use it to communicate transcendent truth!
Part of the reason I'm so passionate about film is that I put my faith in Christ after watching a movie called The Hiding Place. God used that medium to help me understand the message. And it changed the trajectory of my life.
Here's a link to Brewing Culture.
3 Comments:
Mark... I agree with you about short-films becoming a future preaching genre. I am always deeply moved by films that are well thought out and that communicate a message rather than just present entertainment. But lately I have also been struggling with the issue that the direction of our culture's movement towards becoming "image-driven" seems to come at the cost of also becoming illiterate, as if they are inextricably linked. One of the recent "The Way I See It" quotes [#68] from the infamous Starbucks cups has the author declaring that our society has entered an age when "pictures are more eloquent than words" and that children need to be weened off the "practical poverty of the alphabet." I could not disagree with anything any more than I disagree with this. So here's my question, I guess ... as we strive as a church to "create culture" by communicating in the "video" language of our world, is there a point at which we, being the church, are going to have to become "counter-culture" so as to prophetically speak against the fading importance of the written word?
Lane,
I totally understand the concern.
Job 11:6 is my fall-back verse: "true wisdom has two sides." In other words, I think truth is found in the tension of opposites. It's both/and. Right-brain and left-brain. Words and pictures. Grace and Justice.
Jesus is both the "image" of God and the "word" of God.
Both/And.
Mark
I agree with you 100%... and hope it came across as such. My thing is that I don't exactly see it taking place. I've yet to attend a church conference that had BOTH a session on needing to be tech savvy with visuals AND a session on the dangers of overdoing it. (Are there dangers?) I guess I look at this the way Jeff Goldbloom's character (Ian Malcolm)looked at cloning in "Jurassic Park," where he stated that they had spent so much time wondering IF they could create the dinosaurs that they never bothered to ask SHOULD they do it.
I'm not looking for one or the other, video versus word, I'm just wondering where the balance is between being culturally relevant versus being culturally prophetic. I haven't seen or heard anyone address it yet. As the up and coming generation's illiteracy rate climbs and climbs becuase of the over-indulgence of video... is there a danger that they will come to misunderstand the gospel if churches don't take the BOTH/AND approach. Just thinking out loud... honestly.
Kudos though on blogging before 7:00 AM... I'm not even coherent at that point. Thanks for the dialogue.
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