As the world financial crisis deepens, it's refreshing to remember that life is not about money, or the value of our earthly possessions.

Birds still sing in the morning,
trees continue to grow,
life emerges from places out of view.
The Source of life continues to pulse and provide spiritual and physical sustenance,
if we'd only stop to appreciate it.

Whatever financial challenges lie ahead for our struggling world, may it cause us to take stock of what really matters.
Instead of hunting for life in material gain, may we seek out life beneath the surface.

You know about fast food.
Perhaps you also know about slow food.

Well, along with slow food came slow travel, slow shopping, and slow design.

The internet is a truly remarkable place, with so many exciting things happening everywhere around the world.

This is great news for filmmakers, and for those of us who believe that short films can make our world a better place. I’ve added links (see our links page for fuller description of each) to a few sites that I’ve come across just in the last week.
Pangea, Media that Matters, Slum-TV and One world TV

Julie Rigg interviewed Nicole Kidman recently about her involvement in a new film, Margot at the Wedding. As they discussed the ‘smaller, riskier films’ that Nicole tends to do best at, I was struck by what she said:

Just a quick note to say that the films are in, our 'faith respondents' are busily writing their short reflections, and we hope to launch later this month.

Stay tuned!

Dear Tali,

It’s been a little while since I wrote. So sorry – life is getting so busy these days.
There are so many things to deal with I sometimes wonder where to start. I get overwhelmed. I heard a rumour that you were a bit, too.

In fact, it’s about being overwhelmed that I wanted to write to you about.
I’m sure there’ll be psychologists in years to come – if they’re not already doing so – who’ll have fancy names for what we experience when we go online: being google-eyed, web-weary or having you-tube fatigue (only I’m sure they’ll use latin names).

I’m especially thinking about creating for online.

I hate when you think you’ve created something original – a painting, a poem, a short film, a website – then you go online, and you find that tens, hundreds, maybe even THOUSANDS of people have already had similar ideas before you! It can be soooo depressing.

Scientists work out if something is alive by asking a few basic questions:
Does it breathe, eat, grow, respond, have DNA, excrete and reproduce?

That's fine for a physical thing, but what about something less tangible,
like an idea or a concept? What about...
• the memory of a loved-one
• a work of art
• an organisation
• Christmas
• God
... how do I know if these things are alive?

Andrew Waywood, a deep thinker on education I met briefly many years ago, had a theory about this which I've never forgotten. His 'test' for if something living was this:

Does it speak,
or is it spoken about?

To me, this is a most profound way of working out if something is alive or not, and goes to the heart of what being alive is all about. A friend of mine suggested this is what “memes” are all about. Perhaps.

Tali is a fictional character. She is a visual artist interested in filmmaking, still in secondary school in her mid-late teens. As Tali explores the world with fresh eyes, my own eyes are opened to new ideas and trends. Tali has grown up in a Christian family and as Christian myself, I naturally want to encourage her to expand her faith as she expands her understanding of the world through photography, filmmaking, and art in general. As you might guess, Tali is based on a few real friends of mine, about 20 years my junior.

The trouble with honesty is it’s bad for your brand.

I work in an industry that’s obsessed with image: putting your best foot forward and giving the most positive impression about a particular marketable item or service. Any whiff of negativity is just NOT ON. Edit it out. Don’t give the competitor an inch.

It’s perhaps why I’m equally as obsessed about spirituality that does NOT play these same games.
I LOVE honesty in religion.
I LOVE honesty in art.
Images that do NOT sit well with the whole picture or the ‘grand narrative’ I find particularly appealing.

Take these quotes, for example.
“Everything is meaningless”
“For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief”
You wouldn’t guess they were straight out of the bible (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 1:18), especially if you only listened to the well-marketed Christianity of our western civilisation.

It’s also what makes Mish Mumkin so gripping. If I was Ramzi, devout Muslim, I would have edited out the scenes with the father, or at least re-shot a few lines. Rising in aggression, Father orders his son not to see his girlfriend, saying “even if your eyes came out and burst from their sockets, you’re still not to see her!” You CAN’T SHOW that kind of thing as a Muslim in Australia…

Unless you’re honest.

In 1946, only a few years before writing the great classic 1984, George Orwell penned his manifesto, Why I write. Aside from the need to earn a living, he summarised his four basic motivations as follows:

1. sheer egoism – to be remembered after death, to prove himself to others
2. aesthetic enthusiasm – the joy of the art-form and his desire to share it
3. historical impulse – to record facts and store them for posterity
4. political purpose – in the widest possible sense…

Political purpose he defined as the desire to push the world in a certain direction – to alter peoples' idea of the kind of society they should strive after. While the different motivations drove him to varying degrees at different times, it was the fourth which he held to be the most important for writing.

The sentiments Orwell spoke of could equally apply to “why I make films”, or even more broadly, “why I create”.
Why DO we create films, when they take up so much time, effort and money?
Why DO we create any original work of art, when the daunting reality of the vast world-wide ocean of talent often makes our efforts feel like tiny droplets?

Why?
The reasons are much bigger than politics; more profound than a desire to change the world. Something spiritual, I believe, is going on. I’m sure Orwell would agree, as he concluded in his manifesto:

All writers are vain, lazy and selfish, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book (and making a film) is an awful struggle, like a long bout of some serious illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Why do YOU create?