In a time where the cinematic experience becomes more and more individualistic, we need to remind ourselves of the advantages of the shared experience. We all long for connection and being part of a community, being able to share our lives and thoughts. A film has all the necessary ingredients as a starting point.
Films can make us feel less alienated in this world if we let them. At its best, a film both makes you laugh hysterically and put pressure on our vulnerable trigger spots. At first it hurts and makes you cry, but the release you than feel is pure heaven.
Why do we seek cinematic experiences and how do these experiences move beyond the screen and become embodied in communal and spiritual ways? This was the questions that brought a variety of filmmakers, writers, religions leaders, artists and film enthusiasts from Judson church, APRIL (the Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life) and INTERFILM, for an intensive weekend symposium in Judson Memorial Church on Manhattan, New York (20-22 June, 2025). A crash course of how our senses and the shared experience deepens our perception of film at its best.
Watching a cajun gumbo being prepared in ”Daughters of the dust” by Julie Dash, at the same time as a vegan gumbo is cooked in the same room and served during the following film discussion; How does that contribute to the cinematic experience? Do we feel more connected and close to the film characters? What happens when we share a meal together? We all know the answer. Questions on the table helped to start the discussion, but it didn’t need to be much fuel. It’s beyond my comprehension why not every church has a film club, to initiate a dialogue about life, theology and the gospel.
Six artists from the US and England were invited to discuss their own work and reflect on the ways cinema creates community, embodiment, and empathy in both pre-production and post-production.
Julie Sexeny, Wofford College, showed how creative it can be to work with students on films. In a new film adaptation of “Mayor Barbara” (after George Bernhard Shaw), people can play a role in the making of a work of art.
Nina Danino, filmmaker and Reader in Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, also showed an example of loneliness in her film Solitude.
André Daughtry, freelance photographer and filmmaker, previously with Judson Memorial, presented his film project “Wilderness”:
He shows people in Columbia who are striving for visibility and power. Spiritual influences are Catholic tradition, nature piety - and – their music.
Anthony D: Padgett, artist and dancer from Manchester, showed an inter religious disco cabaret. Film and live performance are intertwined.
Mark Dean, artist and chaplain at the University of the Arts London, talked about how the experience of being a ”third culture kid” and a 12 step program led him to art school, but also how lonely it can be as an artist in church. His short film “Twister” is based on the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”
Gwendolen Cates, photography and filmmaker, presented the first excerpts from her feature film “The Doctrine”. The film is about the rights of indigenous people in the USA, but at the same time they stand up for the rights of nature in confrontation with colonial and Catholic tradition. A film about “dignity”.
The award-winning film “Shoplifters” by Hirokazu Kore-Eda provided an opportunity to talk about family images and how people belong together.
At a time when “empathy” has recently been attacked and problematized, various participants made empathy, compassion and action a strong theme of the conference.
Micah Bucey: “If empathy is a sin, sin boldly.”
The Grand Finale was a Sunday Morning Film Service with carefully selected film music as Over the Rainbow and SB Rodriguez Plate, professor at Hamilton College and Executive Director of APRIL; preaching about “Carnal Cinema”. Convinced that religion has less to do with beliefs than bodies, he queries the way people connect with physical objects through sense perception. Things we see, hear, taste, smell and touch give us our spiritual dimension. Just like this film weekend.
It was pure luxury to spend an intensive film weekend on Manhattan with 40 degrees Celsius outside. A cinematic experience that turned strangers into friends. We are all grateful to the organizers SB Rodriguez-Plate from APRIL and Micah Bucey from Judson Memorial Church, both great examples of how to integrate art and theology.
Marie Starck, Journalist and member of the INTERFILM Board [complemented by Dietmar Adler, Jury Coordinator INTERFILM, Germany]