Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 recently interviewed me for his blog of apologetics resources.
Blog: Apologetics 315The Wonderful online video site mubi.com is making available for free three of the documentaries screening at the Sheffield documentary film festival this week. It's worth signing up to Mubi just for this! Details below, taken from the Mubi site:
"No longer critically marginalized as of lesser importance than the fiction feature film, no longer automatically regarded as 'box-office poison,' and with many of its most notable works stimulating widespread debate throughout print and electronic media, the documentary today is enjoying an unprecedented outburst of creative vitality," write the editors of Cineaste in the new Summer 2011 issue. What's more, the rapid evolution of digital technology has made it possible for documentarians to move fast, to fashion raw material culled from ongoing events into cohesive narratives, arguments and/or essays. Case in point: Zero Silence (site; image above), an up-to-the-minute report on the generation that's brought on the Arab Spring, drawing on footage shot between November 2009 and — literally — just a few days ago.
Not only is Zero Silence screening at the Sheffield Doc/Fest (site), running through Sunday, but we're also teaming up with the festival to present it here, worldwide, for free, along with two other films from the lineup: Messenger of the Great River, the story of one of Mali's musical sons, Afel Bocoum; and Remote Transmissions, the newest addition to the Big Stories web-doc series that features collaborations between small town communities and filmmakers in residence.
Sheffield has prompted the Guardian to check in on the state of the documentary. Sampling the package, we find Ben Dowell chatting with Steve James (Hoop Dreams), who'll be giving a masterclass: "I sincerely believe we are living in a golden age for documentary filmmaking." Ross Biddiscombe meets Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares), who "insists that he is not a documentary maker, but a journalist who tells stories that 'take serious journalism and fine tune it with low-end trash and jokes' and he dismisses anyone who considers his films — with their unique convergence of quick-fire visual images and off-beat music and background noises — to be some kind of modern art form."
Meg Carter looks into the impact of the evolution of filmmaking technology and social media on documentaries, while Kate Bulkley tackles the transmedia angle. Justin Kary talks with filmmakers who make their docs the centerpiece of a larger online campaign. And Carter and Bukley ask doc-makers how they're going about turning a profit these days.
A doc's verity doesn't necessarily have to be proportional to its "shoddy" aesthetics, argues Kaleem Aftab in the Independent. "[W]hen used in the right manner, composition and staging can enhance the understanding of reality and better put across the intentions of the director. The most eye-catching example showing at Sheffield is Bombay Beach, which won the best documentary film award at this year's Tribeca Film Festival."
On a related note, in a study you can download from Film International, Jez Owen takes on the notion that by applying narrative techniques, contemporary doc-makers "are destroying the integrity of the documentary text by undermining an ideology established over 100 years of evolution."
My friend Mark Meynell is a great film fan, an enthusiast for superheroes and an excellent communicator. So I'm excited to see his new venture - an audio documentary about the significance of superheroes. It's 30 minutes long and is at the bargain price of £1.29 on iTunes (see below). I've not yet had time to listen to it - I'll review it as soon as I get chance.
Having been dreaming, scheming and working on this little project for months with a couple of friends (the illustrious Tim Plyming and the multi-talented radio producer John Sugar), it is with great excitement that we can now announce the release of this new 30 minute radio-documentary style programme:
WHY WE LOVE MEN IN CAPES
Having adapted a talk given in a number of places on the theological significance of superheroes (which has evolved over some years, not least through conversations with fellow-super-believer Nate Morgan-Locke), I was joined in a small studio off Tottenham Court Road by a couple of voice-artist friends (the wonderful Jo Cordle and the simply extraordinary Barry Cooper) to make the programme a couple of months ago. The verbiage was then interspersed with very brief clips from all kinds of movies and tv shows. It was a lot of fun.
The hope is to present worldview provocations in a fresh and intriguing way, aiming for the sort of quality expected of broadcast documentaries.
Men in Capes was therefore a pilot / trial run. Any constructive (!) comments and suggestions hugely appreciated… We’re hoping then to build momentum to offer several every year (perhaps even monthly). To begin with, we obviously need to cover our not inconsiderable costs from the production; but our main reason for this initial attempt was to learn lessons and gain experience for future projects.
So at last, it is now available on iTunes for £1.29. Hurrah! When you consider that a normal track lasting 5 minutes goes for 79p, I hope that you’d agree that this 30 minute effort is a total bargain! Please help us out by downloading and then letting people know about it.
The programme touches on everything from Batman (esp the Christopher Nolan versions) to Superman (including the Bryan Singer reboot), plus Spiderman, The Bionic Man,and even The Incredibles and Chronicles of Narnia. Here’s the programme’s outline:
Nietzsche and the birth of Superman
- CS Lewis and the cause of our yearnings
- The Scary World of the 20th Century
- Searching for a vocabulary of Evil?
Superheroes Families
- Superheroes from Below
- By Chance
- By Choice
Superheroes from Above Echoes of the True Superhero
- Our True Humanity
- The Great Hero
- Christology from Below
- Christology from Above
The Great Rescue
Fancy joining the Culturewatch writing team? We're looking for research interns to come and work with us, primarily working on Culturewatch. It's a great opportunity to develop skills in analysing media, relating Christian faith and contemporary culture, and writing.
Former intern Nicola Lee says,
My internship with Damaris was a great way to challenge myself and develop new skills. I learned how to engage creatively with popular culture, deepened my understanding of the gospel, and got to watch loads of DVDs!
Interns need to be Christians, graduates (though there are often opportunities for current students to do short-term internships during university vacations), and passionate about helping people relate Christian faith and contemporary culture. Interns also need to have some way of supporting themselves financially, like everyone else who works on Culturewatch. You can find full details of what's involved and the requirements at www.damaris.org/interns.
December 13, 2010
Change usually happens slowly in the Church. But a review of the past year's research conducted by the Barna Group provides a time-lapse portrayal of how the religious environment in the U.S. is morphing into something new.
Analyzing insights drawn from more than 5,000 non-proprietary interviews conducted over the past 11 months, George Barna indicated that the following patterns were evident in the survey findings.
The six 'megathemes' to emerge are:
The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.
Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.
Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.
The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.
The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.
Although this is research on the American church, my sense is that it's not too dissimilar in the UK, but am I wrong on this?
Theos, the public theology think-tank has published the results of a survey it commissioned into attitudes towards Christmas in the UK. The results are both very interesting and useful. Director of Theos, Paul Woolley comments:
The stark differences between Christmas for the rich and poor in society should trouble us.In general terms, the financial downturn is clearly forcing people to tighten their belts this year. Still, it's interesting to note that 62% of people don't think it will make any difference to their enjoyment of Christmas.
The fact that 68% of people will be spending Christmas with their family shows how significant family bonds are, but we should be concerned that people aged 65 and over are most likely to spend Christmas alone.
It's clear that society is split right down the middle regarding the religious significance of Christmas.
It will surprise people that young people are most likely to believe that Jesus is relevant to their Christmas.
It's difficult to work out why fewer people expect to attend a Christmas church service than in previous years, although 36% remains a relatively high figure.
I can’t help but wonder, though, if the cognitive disconnect between today’s families and the world of fairy tales isn’t rooted in something even more complex. Maybe the idea of long-suffering doesn’t connect to an instant-gratification culture. Maybe the idea of being part of a larger story (like the redeemed kingdom of Sleeping Beauty) doesn’t connect to a world of narcissism, where the story is all about us (like Hannah Montana). Maybe too, we hate the idea of being rescued. We’d rather believe that we could save ourselves.
Referring to the claims of the above chart, Fast Company said, “So to anyone who thinks the Bible’s the last word on anything, remember this: It isn’t even the last word on itself.”
Professional skeptic, Sam Harris, commissioned this infographic chart titled “Contradictions in the Bible” through his foundation Project Reason. It is an impressive form of presentation, but filled with misinformed content.
This is not new. This chart just wraps-up old claims, which have already been answered, in an awesome piece of design and presentation.
There’s an interesting article in USA Today by David Campbell and Robert Putman, two political scientists who’ve just completed a magisterial, five-year study of the way in which religion affects American society. They try and present their findings in an even-handed, politically neutral way, but there’s no escaping the fact that religion and religious people emerge vey well. Their new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us All, sounds like a definitive rebuttal to Christopher Hitchens’s assertion that “religion poisons everything”.
One of Campbell and Putman’s main discoveries is that religious people are “better neighbours” than their non-religious counterparts. By this, they mean that they’re more likely to volunteer to help out those less fortunate than themselves, as well as give to charity:
Forty percent of worship-attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of Americans who never attend services. Frequent-attenders are also more likely than the never-attenders to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%). The same is true for philanthropic giving; religious Americans give more money to secular causes than do secular Americans. And the list goes on, as it is true for good deeds such as helping someone find a job, donating blood, and spending time with someone who is feeling blue.
