Hello There Everyone!
In the hope that this September finds you dry – but bored and adventurous – I would like to invite you to the inaugural season of The Contemplative Cinema Club ( CCC – likeit?).
This is an endeavor to use cinema as the stimulus for spiritual conversation.
Starting THIS Monday I hope to show films from all over the world on the theme of human belief. Each of the films shows a dimension of what it is to believe in the unseen, whilst remaining sane, and I hope each of the films position inner strength and fortitude at the center of human life. Thats the idea, anyhow. So here is the imagined list for the next six week which I hope will tickle your fancy.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATHEW (1964) PIER PAOLO PASOLINI 29th Sept.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an atheist, indeed a Marxist, and his The Gospel According to Matthew is routinely interpreted as a proto-Marxist allegory. Yet Pasolini was perhaps first of all a poet, and the concepts of the sacred and the divine, far from repelling him as so much religious superstition, held for him a powerful appeal. In 1962 he came to Assisi in response to Pope John XXIII’s call for dialogue with non-Christian artists. While there, he read through a book of the Gospels “from beginning to end, like a novel,” later proclaiming the story of Jesus “the most exalting thing one can read.”
JOAN OF ARC (1928) CARL T. DREYER 6th Oct
“To witness Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is to glimpse the soul of a saint in her hour of trial. The film is more than a dramatization, more than a biopic, more than a documentary: It is a spiritual portrait, almost a mystical portrait, of a Christ-like soul sharing in the sufferings of Christ.”
ANDREI RUBLEV (1969) ANDREI TARKOVSKY 13th Oct
The masterpiece, Andreiv Rublev charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, a period marked by endless fighting between rival Princes and by Tatar invasions.
THE DESTINY OF MAN (1959) SERGI BONDARCHURK.20th Oct
Andrei Sokolov, the film’s protagonist, had lost in the war with fascist Germany his wife and children, had survived the horrors of a concentration camp. He was already being led to be shot, but at the last minute the camp’s commandant, Muller, revoked the sentence. After his release from the camp, Andrei Sokolov marched with the Soviet Army as far as Berlin. But Fate would not stop testing him: on Victory Day he got the news of his son Anatoly’s death. And in spite of the fact that he seemed to have lost everything, he remained a good human being and became a father to an orphaned boy.
The great Russian director and actor Sergei Bondarchuk played the leading character in his own film, which was to become a hymn to human spirit and faith in life
THE DOROTHY DAY STORY (1996) MICHAEL RAY RHODES 3rd NovThis biographical drama was based on the true story of Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic who devoted much of her life to working with the poor and homeless on New York City’s Lower East Side. Born in an Episcopalian household in 1897, Day was a tireless and outspoken champion of the rights of the poor and disenfranchised. Day came under heavy criticism for her political and social activism; as she put it, “If you feed the poor, you’re called a saint, but if you ask why they’re poor, you’re called a Communist.”
YES (2005) SALLY POTTER. 10th Nov
A bold and daring work from one of the UK’s most exciting directors, YES is Sally Potters response to the events of 9/11. An American woman trapped in a loveless marriage meets a Lebanese doctor who lives in exile in London, working as a cook. The two embark on a passionate affair which gradually pushes them to the limits of who and what they are and challenges their assumptions about sexuality and surrender, about morality and ethics, about God and about love.
The films start at 7pm on Monday Nights in Clarendon St Spirituality Centre, (Edith Stein room), and the sessions will last until 9.30pm approx. and include tea, fruit, coffee, biscuits, POPCORN… Donations accepted.
SO, Please feel very invited and welcome at the opening season of…THE CCC!
Best Wishes,
Christine
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