(Act One trains and mentors Christians of all denominations for careers in mainstream film and television. We prepare our students to produce film and TV projects that combine mastery of craft with great depth and meaning. As a non-profit organization, we are wholly devoted to the professional and spiritual development of our students.)

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This is all fanfare to say that Grassroots Films just was awarded the Best Documentary Feature at the Maui Film Festival, an “Audience Award.” Having seen this very good feature myself in Madison (or at least a version of it) last November, it’s not so surprising that it’s becoming recognized. It is surprising, though to see the mission statement of the Maui Film Fest. It’s kind of spiritual, actually.

It all seems very lovely and inspirational. Get this. This mission is

The Maui Film Festival is built on the belief that great filmmaking is pure alchemy. When filmmakers choose to tell compassionate life-affirming stories, they can change darkness into light. It is this belief in the power of creativity to enlighten, as well as entertain, that is the guiding principal that gives the Maui Film Festival its character, its energy and its soul.

You can be as inspirational as you want but you can’t have a good film festival without funding, and you can’t get funding without sponsorship, and you can’t get sponsor ship without starpower, or in this case “luminarypower.”

A-LIST ‘LUMINARIES’
Since the inaugural Maui Film Festival at Wailea, the Festival has chosen an ‘ohana’ (family) of honorees that it prefers to call luminaries, rather than merely celebrities. As the Festival defines it, a luminary is a film artist whose overall body of work sheds as much light as heat and whose talent and work ethic place them in a category that transcends mere celebrity. A luminary is the real deal.

The list includes: Joan Allen (Galaxy Award), Angela Bassett (Pathfinder Award), Jessica Biel (Shining Star Award),Adrien Brody (Friend of the Festival),Tim Burton (Silversword Award), Patricia Clarkson (Pathfinder Award), Claire Danes (Nova Award), Geena Davis (Stella Award), Clint Eastwood (Silversword Award), Jake Gyllenhaal (Shining Star Award), Laird Hamilton & Dave Kalama (Beacon Award),Woody Harrelson (Navigator Award),Ted Hope (Trailblazer Award),Anthony Hopkins (Silversword Award), Helen Hunt (Stella Award),William Hurt (Navigator Award), Greg Kinnear (Navigator Award), William H. Macy (Rainmaker Award), Bill Maher (Maverick Award), Mike Myers (Silversword Award), John C. Reilly (Navigator Award), Rob Reiner (Lights! Camera! Passion! Award), and Owen & Luke Wilson (Shooting Star Award).

It’s all very fancy and certainly hopeful in a world growing darker by the day. Congratulations, Grassroots!

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“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” –Flannery O’Connor

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Most of the few people who I’ve told about God’s pigmental locutions do, in fact, think I’m a bit mad. But just as we don’t choose God because He chooses us (John 15), we don’t choose the medium through which he communicates Himself; He chooses the medium. For many the medium is lively and electifying: locutions, ecstasies, visions, dreams and direct encounters with the divine. For others the medium is hidden, mundane, in the “still, small voice” of prayer. Many hear and feel nothing. Such was the case of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta for over fifty years. She felt absolute nothingness for decades, but in that emptiness received everything.

Without divulging too much of my soul I can say that I’m often in the middle of that spectrum in my relationship with the Most Holy Trinity. However, at some points in my life, He’s appeared most sensationally to my soul. I use that word deliberately, for He uses my extreme sensitivity–to light, sound, words, music and even color–to communicate to me. It at times has been quite subtle, but at other times quite visceral and striking.

Perhaps in another blog entry, I’ll delve into my sensory interior drama with greater detail (it is kind of a long story). But for right now I will say that while the devil has access to our exterior senses and some of our interior senses, God has access as well. We must train ourselves in prayer and thought to be attentive to the still, small voice of God, whatever flourishing form it takes.

Color Notes for the Road:
*In the midst of my color journey years ago on a pilgrimage, I heard of the book “Astonishing Splashes of Colour” by Clare Morall. While the premise of the main character–having synaesthesia, a condition where one’s senses are crossed (hearing colors, smelling sounds, etc.)–is very interesting, in the end it was just a postmodern piece, colour without form or soul.
*An electronic palette for Colorphiles. I love this. This is linked to a recent blog entry on Color Etymologies.
* Color Matters, another Color web site.

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To get to the Other Side!

I have a visually-based vocabulary and memory, so in an effort to develop my soul’s anamnesis sparked by a pilgrimage of the past, I decided to look up the Phoenix.

Here’s an succinct guide to Christians symbols by Fish Eaters, the slightly reactionary but undoubtedly faithful online community of traddy Catholics. 

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HT to Matthew Milliner.

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Lucas Kwong wonders if his alma mater, Yale, is going to hell in a hand-basket. Why does he wonder that, you may ask? Because of the recent artistic exploits in the moral morass that is ivy league “higher” education. He elucidates,

By now, I’m sure, most citizens of the blogosphere are familiar with the escapades of Aliza Shvarts, abortion artist extraordinaire. Over the course of nine months, Shvarts allegedly inseminated herself nine times with sperm obtained from anonymous donors, only to ingest abortive pills two weeks after each insemination. Shvarts now intends to display videos of her self-induced miscarriages, as well as an installation of her own blood, on campus. While the university insists that her story amounts to a “creative fiction project,” I suspect that Aliza’s exhibit is nothing less than an example of art imitating life—not in terms of its content, but in terms of its philosophical underpinnings.

He goes on to say that this terrible foray into artistic madness might be good in the sense that it will reveal a lot of modern and contemporary art–particularly that which emerges from the Babylonian ivory towers of higher ed–for what it is: creative nihilism, for which the logical end is death. Aliza Shvarts, aside from the wretchedness of her actions (true or hoax), has aborted art, and thus has smote goodness and true, and blotted out beauty.

These are signs of the times, an apophatic approach to art that may, in the end (which is the beginning), redeem time and beauty.

+++++++++++++

Matthew Milliner, art historian of faith, give his two cents here.

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Melody Gardot, at the age of 19, was hit by an SUV while riding her bicycle. She just wanted to be a visual artist, but that goal faded as she lay severely injured in a hospital bed bereft of short term memory, with an acute sensitivity to light and sound.

One of her doctors, knowing that Melody had played the piano before the accident, and knowing that music therapy helps rebuild the neuron pathways that were damaged in the accident, suggested she take up music as a means to heal and regain some of her greatly diminished cognitive abilities.

And really, that was the beginning of the end. In recovery she began a foray into a new medium, and now is flourishing as a jazz/soul/folk singer who performs with the likes of Susan Tedeschi, Livingston Taylor and the Wood Brothers.

Listen the radio interview online. My little summary doesn’t do justice to her story, and frankly, you must really listen to her voice.

For me, her story is a microcosmic artistic death-and-resurrection, and it inspires. That is, it breathes in life to someone like me, who, even on the sunniest lovely Saturday, wonders if, in all my weakness, I can do or write anything inspiring.

It’s the season of hope, and I’m realizing my weakness is the perfect means for creating something great.

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