Introduction Michael Boland Director, "Spy Shop" (ABC TV) Many generation X film geeks would be familiar with the work of Paul Schrader, writer and creator of the classic DeNiro/Scorsese movie Taxi Driver. Perhaps not so many generation X film geeks would be familiar with his UCLA Masters thesis, published as Transcendental Style in Film – Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer in 1972. Like all academic writing, Transcendental Style in Film is not exactly a page turner – don’t go looking for it in the paperback section in the airport bookshop – but all the same, it’s a fascinating piece of writing. In it, Schrader goes about breaking down the cinematic elements of style (editing, camera angles, editing) employed by the cinema directors, Ozu, Bresson and to a lesser extent Dreyer, as they search to define ‘the spiritual’ and in a broader sense, humanity’s eternal quest for meaning. Importantly, the films Schrader discusses are not necessarily ‘religious’ in content, as per the whizz-bang biblical epics of Cecil B. De Mille. They’re in fact largely set in the mundane grind of every day experience. The beauty of these films however is in the way they shift away from stories of every day experience, and into an exploration of the mystery of life itself. To my mind, film is a fantastic medium through which to explore spirituality. Through our absorption of sights and sounds, and through the depiction of a completely independent time and space, we are transported into other dimensions, and in the simplest terms, isn’t that what our need for spirituality is – an escape from the so called ‘real’ and into ‘eternal ecstasy’? The November Campfire Film Festival displays an interesting cross section of films, each of them approaching notions of ‘the spiritual’ from their own unique perspective. Starting Over by Wayne Taylor is a beautiful short film as it doesn’t try to bludgeon us with its message. It allows us to simply watch the events in a young boy’s life as he quite innocently deals with a tragic situation. Visually, there’s a strong sense in which our young boy is contained - whether it’s the recurring doorway and the ferocious white backlight, or the camera shot containing him as he walks down the street. Finally, the film ends where it starts off and we’re left wondering if this boy will ever escape, and perhaps more succinctly, if there’s a ‘god’ out there that’s actually looking out for him. Sometimes I feel like this by Eric Henry is quite sweet – an endearing analogy for the human experience. In it, a strange little figure needs sustenance, but that sustenance seems to be always out of reach. The film leaves plenty of room for us to interpret just what that ‘sustenance’ is… food, love, meaning, god? Who knows? Like all good films, it leaves you room to think, and it may even put a funny little smile on your face. The Most Important Image Ever Taken by Tony Darnell stands alone in this festival. Rather than exploring notions of spirituality through human experience, Darnell is objectively demonstrating the wonder of the universe through a deep space photograph taken by the Hubble telescope. Certainly, it’s a thought provoking image, but one could argue that a baby’s smiling face, a reflection in water, or even a ham sandwich is just as ‘important’ an image – that is, if we accept that the ‘mystery’ or ‘unknowability of life’ is in fact all around us. Allow me to add, however, I previewed the festival with my 71 year old father and this film was by far and away his favourite. The Boss by Andrzej Swietanowski uses animation’s visual freedom to explore an amusing depiction of ‘God’. Like The Most Important Image Ever Taken, it explores notions of spirituality via depicting the sheer vastness/unknowability of the world/universe around us. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced of its logic. Just because many people are born and die on Earth each day, we need not necessarily assume a ‘God’ is in control. Of course, for those of true ‘faith’ this one fact may be all they need for their convictions to be confirmed. Hope by Tim and Kim takes the psychological notion of ‘hope’ and brings it to life as a living character. It’s a life affirming tale, prompting us to believe that ‘goodness’ exists – in a tangible physical form. It’s a sweet little film as deep down, we’d all like to think angels really exist. Well hey, I do anyway! Michael Boland is a director with a strong understanding of script and performance. He’s script edited drama for the major Australian television networks, as well written and directed his own indie short films. His latest work as director, the ten part short comedy series Spy Shop has just screened on ABC-TV and is available as a vodcast on the JTV website.  Faith Responses In ascending order of Australian representation (ABS, 2006) | [Sikh]
The film that had the greatest impact on me was “The most important image ever taken”. Why? - It re-aligns our perspective in the modern day world, where it’s easy to be caught up in things at the micro-level. This movie literally magnifies our view of the world (and beyond) and reminds us of how significant we really are. It begs the question, “are we really as important as we think we are?”
Most importantly, I think the world of science and the world of religion have always had a clear dichotomy. The world of religion concentrates on the Creator, while the world of science concentrates on the Creation. Somehow this film transcends that dichotomy and subtly talks of both – it inspires us with wonderment of the Creator by showing us the magnitude of His Creation, without even mentioning any of this overtly.
The film touches a chord with me because as a Sikh, it reminded me of what Guru Nanak (the founder of Sikhism) uttered five and half centuries ago – that there are countless planets, countless universes and countless galaxies. If you think that someone holds up the earth (as did the ancient Greeks that Atlas held it up and as did the ancient Indians, who thought a bull by the name of “Dhaul” held up the earth and we had an earthquake when he shifted the load from one horn to the other), then who holds up that ‘someone’ and what about the other earths, planets universes and galaxies? This is a pointer to a Higher force.
So, for me, this film was a simple statement which inspires awe about the Creator and His amazing Creation. Really nice!!! Manpreet Singh
Executive Producer Punjabi Program, SBS Radio, Melbourne | Writer/columnist for India Today, Hindustan Times and www.sikhchic.com |
| Hope is a wonderfully poignant and touching film which goes to the essence of what human existence is all about. It’s about clinging onto “pure emotion” when all seems lost. There’s a universality about this film that appeals to me – whether the filmmakers intended Hope to be a metaphor for God is ultimately up to the viewer. The images of Martin Luther King and John and Yoko, which emerge in a burst of colour, are particularly evocative, as is the minimalist piano soundtrack by renowned New York composer Philip Glass. Darren Levin
National Arts Editor, Australian Jewish News |
| The episode is a vivid reminder of poverty amidst plenty - a very sharp focus on the ill-balanced society around us. As a consequence of hunger, poverty and deprivation, even innocent children turn to delinquent behaviour, beyond their primary need. Unfortunately these occurrences are not uncommon. One of the principal tenets of Hinduism pronounces the world as "Vasudaiva Kutumbakam" – meaning this world is our large family created by God –and those with a little bit more should share their fortunes with those who don't have enough.
Regrettably, it is a shameful indictment of our society that these pearls of wisdom have become engraved stones only in mind, not in practice. The greatest challenge posed by the film to all of us is how to craft our social policies to eradicate poverty, educate society to share and care. The goal for all of us should be "Bahujan Hitaye –Bahujan Sukhaye" (meaning- 'The greatest good of all brings the greatest happiness of all). With determined efforts nothing is impossible. Abhay Awasthi
Executive Director of the Hindu Foundation | Local Justice of the Peace, Melbourne |
| Nestled in the South Transept of Westminster Abbey, London, is Poets' Corner: the resting place of Chaucer, Dickens, Kipling and Tennyson. There stands a sizable memorial to William Shakespeare, who gazes upon a floor slab – a more modest memorial to Laurence Olivier. Why should such an extraordinary congregation be gathered in this famous church? Not purely for doctrinal reasons, surely. The writers and actors remembered here are not uniformly ambassadors of the Church of England. Rather, this expresses a tendency in the great religions of the world to value art, to celebrate it, and even to appropriate it. And what would religion be without its art? What is the Vatican without Michelangelo? Andalucia without the breathtaking intricacy of the Alhambra? Islam without Rumi? To survey the great art, and the great artists of world civilisation is inevitably to survey the triumphs of religious art. The relationship between the two in human history has been richly symbiotic. Recent decades has seen this relationship erode with increasing rapidity. Much of the art that captures the popular imagination both in the West and the East, is thoroughly secular. Several religious movements have come to disparage artistic expression as vain, perhaps even necessarily decadent. Such religious austerity can be deleterious. As the prophet Muhammad disclosed: "God is beautiful and loves beauty". While secular art is valuable, art must not be surrendered to that realm if religion is to flourish. Yet art, like religious thought, does not stand still. In St Paul's cathedral stands a modern sculpture of the mother and child, an abstract rendering that would have been incomprehensible to classicists past, but that contributes to the self-renewing dynamism of this medieval edifice. Today, theists may relevantly embrace digital and transient media, and in this festival, they do. These explorations are embryonic in a sense, but in an artistic age dominated by the secular, they are importantly pioneering. We cannot yet know what will come to endure. But we do know that in the absence of such initiatives as these, the answer will surely be "nothing". Waleed Aly
Author, People Like Us: How arrogance is dividing Islam and the West (Picador, 2007) |
| My first choice is The Most Important Image. This video provides a comprehensible presentation of the mind-boggling dimensions of space. The photograph, which provides the title to the video, shows us that even in apparently empty parts of the sky there are vast numbers of universes. The clear conclusion of the video is that our solar system and our planet are far from unique. Indeed our world appears to be countlessly replicated throughout the universe. While each faith has relevance and meaning for its followers it is apparent after watching this video how illogical it is that one faith should exclusively explain the universe. The Most Important Image is a clear reminder of how limited a geocentric view of reality is. The goal, which is hinted at by this video, is to expand our minds to be as limitless as the space that we are part of. Ian Green
Director and CEO | The Great Stupa of Universal Compassion, Bendigo, Victoria | www.stupa.org.au |
| Ever since I was a kid I have loved the night sky, gazing for hours into what seemed like eternal blackness punctuated by points of brilliance. As I grew, my father introduced me to the constellations and other stellar wonders and I still remember the sense of awe that rose in me when I first spied the 'Jewelery Box'. Since that time I have delved into string theory, quantum mechanics, astrophysics and the like and have thoroughly enjoyed films like 'Contact' that raise the issues of religion and science, place and meaning, existence and alien life, etc, in the form particular to the visual arts. Carl Sagan has been a pioneer in the field, mostly because of his refusal to reduce astroscience to scientism and a film dedicated to him (as in this case) is certainly warranted. I found the images of The Most Important Image Ever Taken beautiful and the explanations valid; it is certainly helpful to get a visual representation of the vast size of the universe. But I found myself intrigued and annoyed at the title of this short film and the statement within it that the image in question (very important to be sure) is the 'single most important image taken by humankind.' Really? One of perhaps… but the 'single most'? It is unfortunate that in a film dedicated to Sagan, the overarching statement is one of contraction of thought and feeling rather than expansion. I would have thought by now that we had moved beyond the dualism of art and science and could appreciate that meaning is a human construct that delves into both knowledge (however acquired) and art (however expressed). The Hubble Deep-Field Image is indeed important – it speaks volumes about the vastness of the universe – but so to0 is an image of a loving couple's embrace – it speaks volumes about the vastness of human emotion. The point is simply that in this grand-tragic condition called life we draw on much more than that which is external to us in order to expand and frame our experience. This image is a beauty but so too is the photo of my kids I carry with me each day. Meaning is created in concert with and within the frameworks that we inhabit; for me the stellar universe has never threatened, even when I moved beyond faith in a god and found myself in a period of incredible darkness before moving through it to embrace the beauty of living life in the moment. It reminds me not of how small I am but of how connected everything is (we are, after all, stardust) and of how much wonder there is if we are willing to open our eyes, our imaginations and our hearts. Mark Crees
BA, BLitt(Hons), MA, MTheol, PhD(candidate) | Former minister of religion |
| Never kill a question,
it is a fragile thing.
A good question deserves to live.
One doesn’t so much answer it as converse with it,
or, better yet, one lives with it. Gerhard Frost in ‘Bless my growing’ I recalled this long remembered verse after my third viewing of the five films. What a feast! So many issues, so many questions raised in 30 minutes of film! What a wonderful discussion starter for a group of honest thinkers trying to make sense of life, attempting to chart a path through the minefields of contemporary life and thought, willing to acknowledge both problem and mystery. My first choice is The Boss. What a quirky, startling film; full of humour, surprise and disturbing questions! A cheeky logo to begin, a spider that burps, some weird buildings, strange music, a terrifying manipulator all squeezed into four minutes. The Boss asks the most confronting question of all. Is there someone in control of it all and if so who can they possibly be to leave us in such a troubled, albeit strangely beautiful world. In response to this half hour of stimulus, I can sympathise with any viewer drawing some pessimistic conclusions about the pain of being neglected and isolated, the frustration of glimpsing but never being able to grasp the joy and fulfilment that we may have momentarily glimpsed, the genuine despair in trying to reconcile a faith in One who loves and cares for creation with the utter randomness of the world’s pain and violence, the suspicion that faith is simply a human defence by people whose lives of quiet desperation would otherwise be unbearable. And yet, as I allow myself to sit with the pain of the questions raised in these films, there is a fragile affirmation that the One we name as God, the God we meet in Jesus Christ, is somehow down there in the depths with us, suffering with us in our despair and brokenness.Only a suffering and mysteriously powerless God can guide me through these mysteries. Mac Nicoll
Retired teacher, inner city dweller, incorrigible questioner I recently showed the short movies that are being reviewed and discussed by Campfire to my year 10 Biblical Studies class. To say the least, we were all captivated and saddened by the movie on hope. The movie is incredibly compelling as it takes you into the life of a man who is all alone in a hospital bed and on the verge of death. The movie leaves the viewer in no doubt that he had his fair share of trials and failings in life, yet despite this he is esteemed for having extraordinary hope in life. The movie is creative in the way that hope is portrayed as a lady who is surprised at how often during the man's life she was shared with other people through his actions and attitudes. The tragedy of the film, which is what makes it so compelling to watch, is that this man who had seemed to bring extraordinary hope to so many others throughout his life is devoid of hope at the most crucial time in his life; his death. You are left at the end with a dark, empty feeling of worthlessness as what in life seemed to be so optimistic, in death comes to naught. A man, alone, on his death bed, without any hope about what lies before him. As a Christian I believe that we all have the opportunity to die with the hope of life. I hope that people who watch this film will be challenged to consider that! We don't talk much about it in our culture. Those who are still living speak about death very clinically and without much thought about the reality of what lies beyond our short time here. What hope is there for someone at the end of their life who is about to die? Is it that people will remember them well? That if God exists he must be a God of Love and Love alone? That surely there will be no one who has tried hard in life in hell? The Christian faith tells the truth about the only reliable foundation for hope that exists in our world. The Bible testifies to hope that won't desert us at death. Hebrews 10: 22-23 Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
In a fallen and broken world, how can we have hope? In a world where all who are born die, how can we have hope that our existence will in any way be meaningful and extend beyond the death of our bodies? The Bible testifies that the very one who's air we breathe and world we live in has acted in human history to bring salvation and Hope to the lost through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ so that we can have the assurance of eternal peace and life with him. It is a hope that does not disappoint us on our death beds because the one who promises it is faithful. Hebrews 6:18-19 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. 19We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.
It is hope that Jesus Christ has secured for us and is on offer to all who will call upon his name. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Andrew Bawden
Biblical Studies Teacher | Waverley Christian College |
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