Wednesday Wonder

March 3, 2010

So the True/False Film Festival comes to another close. This was its seventh season and its beginning point was to review over 700 submitted films. The chosen finalists were provocative and stimulating and worthy of a world class festival. The presence of producers and directors at the many venues added to the authenticity of the experience. I know that in the films I took in these artists were coming to Columbia directly from the other film festivals where their same films had shown and in some cases premiered in festivals with such names as Cannes, Toronto, and Sundance.

One of the unusual features of the True/False, in contrast to peer festivals such as the St. Louis Film Festival, is that the lineup is exclusively comprised of documentaries, the so called non-fiction offerings. That is different, but good.

Each one of the films I viewed explored its subject matter in disarming, honest and penetrating ways. The sign of a good doc is that the presentation and artistic interpretation has a revelatory nature; it uncovers and illuminates that which may have been hidden, at least to us, the viewing audience. And that, in my mind, is part of the religious enterprise – revealing the hidden, making the truth known, bringing together the pieces in a new way so that they are seen to be a part of the created whole.

As I listened to Laura Poitras, director of the stunning film, The Oath, her comments resonated with me. She spoke of the vast complexity of our times, the interconnected politics, diverse sub cultures and deep historical background that leads to our present moment. What we generally receive through pop journalism and our sound bite culture are simplistic analysis and half-baked answers. But complex problems deserve a complex, nuanced treatment. You can’t do that in five minutes. Epic themes deserve more than slogans. Life is thick, textured and filled with paradox and contradictions. And so are we, as are our stories. 

And so it seems to me that it is more important than even to set apart and encourage forms of art, journalism, philosophy and research that dare to wade into the deep end. And on a related matter, unless our religious life is willing to do the same, to swim fearlessly in the depths, we are destined to go the way of a mile wide and inch deep faith. There’s no future in that, of course, because the point of faith is to provide more depth not less.

Get deep, church, get deep.