Rossocontinuo

 

Film Info: A film by Roberto Cipriani and Toni Occhiello.  48 minutes. Italian and English.  1989/1992.

Distribution: University Roma Tre, this is the link

Film Summary: This movie presents a popular religiosity event in Southern italy: the processions of so called “Red Christ” during Holy Week. Red color is both a religious and a political symbol.

“Fall From Grace”

Film Title: “Fall From Grace” — by K. Ryan Jones — 2007 — 71 minutes
Distributor: www.fallfromgracemovie.net

Summary: (from the producers)

“God hates fags,” “You’re going to Hell,” “Thank God for 9/11,” “Thank God for dead soldiers.” Even in the darkness, the picket signs glow, not simply because of their neon hues, but because of the incandescent hate with which they are branded.

This shocking rhetoric flows from the Reverend Fred Phelps and his followers at the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas – smack in the center of America’s heartland. Whether it’s on their toxic website www.godhatesfags.com or at one of the 22,000 demonstrations they’ve staged over the last fifteen years, the Church is focused on one key message: America is doomed because, for too long, it has tolerated homosexuality and allowed it to thrive. Church members picket daily in the city of Topeka and often travel abroad. Most recently, Pastor Phelps and his followers have targeted military funerals for soldiers killed in the war in Iraq as a venue to preach God’s wrath against a nation that has apparently been “taken over by the fags.”

Directed by first-time filmmaker K. Ryan Jones – currently a senior at the University of Kansas – Fall From Grace is the first in-depth documentary feature film to focus on Pastor Phelps and his hate group, and features unprecedented access, interviews with Pastor Phelps and other members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Fall From Grace also includes interviews with the myriad of dissenters: Topeka leaders and officials, ministers, theologians, and two of Pastor Phelps’s adult children who have chosen to leave the church and their family.

Westboro Baptist Church is led by Pastor Fred Phelps, a lawyer who was disbarred in the mid-90s for witness intimidation, who started the church fifty years ago. It is a small group, comprised mostly of members of the Phelps family, but their hatred is prolific. They demonstrate anywhere they feel that their message is applicable, like the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was killed for being gay and most recently, at the funerals of military servicemen and women killed in Iraq.

Fall From Grace takes the viewer inside this surreal world with rare interviews and footage of several pickets and church services. The film focuses on a group that represents a variety of contemporary American issues, including intolerance of homosexuality, the right to freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and the War in Iraq.

Battle for the Bible

Film Info:  Battle for the Bible – PBS “God and Politics” series (1987) – 60 minutes.

Distributor ??????????

Summary:  Illustrates a contemporary conflict between Christians who want to enforce a conservative orthodoxy in their denominations versus others who want to maintain their denomination’s tradition of freedom of conscience for individual believers.  Focused on the Southern Baptist Convention.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS

The Bible Belt: Politics of the Second Coming

Film Info: The Bible Belt: Politics of the Second Coming – Canadian Broadcasting Company (1972) – 90 minutes

Distributor: ??????????

Summary:  Examines the rise of fundamentalist Protestant sects in Western Canada during the 1920s and 1930s and their impact on Canadian politics then and now.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS

Holy Terror

Film Info: Holy Terror – CGuild (1986) – 58 minutes

Distributor:  ??????????

Summary:  Portrays the religious legitimation of the New Right (esp anti-abortion) activism of the 1980s.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS

Keeping the Faith

Film Info:  “Keeping the Faith” – by Sherry Jones — PBS (Frontline series) (1987) – 58 minutes

Distributor:  PBS

Summary: Depicts two black churches in Chicago, with particular focus on one middle-class congregation and a secondary focus on a lower-class congregation.  Examines these congregations as sources of vitality, activism, community, and identity.

The larger congregation — Trinity United Church of Christ — is pastored by Jeremiah Wright, the man whom President Barrack Obama said brought him to Christ.  The film was shot nearly 20 years before the controversy over Wright’s political remarks before the 2008 election.  One gets a very good sense of Wright’s drive, his charisma, and his solid theological grounding.  It seems clear to me (JS) that the whole ‘controversy’ was a political hatchet job designed to turn White voters against Obama’s candidacy.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS

Orthodox Christianity: The Rumanian Solution

Film Info: Part of “The Long Search”, a 1977 BBC series hosted by Ronald Eyre – 52 minutes

Distributor: Ambrose Videos has the entire series on DVD for $99

Summary: The Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe seem to be bound to the Communist states in essentially loveless marriages, except in Rumania. The Rumanian Orthodox Church is still seen as an important aspect of Rumania’s cultural heritage and ethnic identity. The Orthodox liturgy is one of the oldest and longest in Christendom, and the spirituality of the services intensified by the Byzantine splendor of the setting and the beauty of some of the most inspiring choral music to be heard in any church in the world.

The Radio Priest

Film Info:  “The Radio Priest” (1989) – PBS – 58 minutes – color & b/w

Distributor: ??????????

Summary:  An interesting documentary about Charles Coughlin, the controversial right-wing Catholic radio preacher of the 1930s.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS

Romero

Film Info:   “Romero” (1989) – Directed by John Duigan, starring Raul Julia – 105 minutes

Distributor: Available from Amazon (www.amazon.com)

Summary:   Feature film based on the story of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, 1980 victim of a political assassination.

From the review by Roger Ebert:

  • Romero was shot to death while celebrating mass. He was, at the time, not only the spiritual leader of El Salvador’s Catholics but one of the most outspoken critics of the government – a government portrayed in this film as little more than a holding company for the economic exploiters of the country. But Romero was not always a critic, and the movie follows his career from the day when he is selected as archbishop because he is considered a “safe” and “moderate” man who will not rock the boat.
  • The radicalization of Romero is shown in terms of his responses to a series of personal experiences. He counsels trust, but then he sees deception. He would like to consider the government honest, but he is lied to. He sees the evidence of murder and repression, and he cannot ignore it any longer. His conscience eventually requires him to speak out against a government that is denying basic human freedoms to its citizens.

Sanctuary

Film Info:   “Sanctuary” ( 1983) – PBS Frontline – 60 minutes

Distributor: ??????????

Summary:  Examines the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, which engaged in civil disobedience to Immigration Service regulations by giving assistance to refugees from political oppression in Central America.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS