ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

documentary

Brewmance – Raise a Glass

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“We’re making liquid art.”

When I got the invitation to screen Christo Brock’s Brewmance, I thought of passing, not because I don’t like beer, but because I’ve seen docs about craft brewing before. They usually lead me to try something new, but I kind of prefer to explore by going to local breweries to see what they have. But then I read that the film was about two groups of homebrewers who were trying to start breweries in my own backyard. That got my attention.

The film serves as a brief history of the craft beer movement starting with the boring US beer world of the 1970s. It was then that a few people started trying to make beer at home and experiment. These people started getting together, sharing recipes and ideas, and spreading new ways of seeing beer. A few of these people began to think that maybe they could do this on a bigger scale and began opening breweries.

That leads us to meet our main characters in the documentary, Dan and Jesse Sundstrom, the father and son beermakers of Ten Mile Brewing Company, and Dan Regan and Eric McLaughlin, two friends who are striving to create Liberation Brewing Company. They are two very different stories, but they both revolve around beer and the problems of making the leap from homebrewer to commercial brewing.

Dan and Jesse went through difficult times through Jesse’s teenage years. But now they have found a way to bond through making beer—a hobby that Dan started years ago and Jesse has followed. One of the revelations that happens in the film is that the Sundstroms are devout Christians and see their beermaking as a part of the ministry to the world.

The friends at Liberation Brewing have led very diverse lives, Regan toured the world with a ska/punk band; McLaughlin has worked for other breweries. They also have brought in a more business-minded friend, Michael Clements for his expertise. Their vision is to have a public house, similar to the places where the idea of the American Revolution “fermented” (that’s from Regan).

The film follows both sets of would-be brewers as they spend about 3 years bringing their dreams to fruition. As with any business start up there are trials along the way. At one point Dan Regan tells the camera, that if they were making a documentary there would be a point where they hit rock bottom. He seems to have felt that several times and then something more happens.

Mixed in with this is also a chance to learn about beer and beer making. Early on it’s mentioned that there are only four ingredients in beer: water, malt, hops, and yeast. As the characters stories play out, there are discursions about each of the ingredients and how each affects the character of different beers. Much of these lessons are led by some of the pioneers in the craft beer industry.

It’s nice to know I have two more local breweries to check out (actually I’ve had some of the Ten Mile beer before). But I’d also recommend this film for people who want to know more about craft beer. It will probably goad you to check out your own local brewers to see what they have for you. I expect there are similar interesting stories you can find out there as well.

Brewmance is available on VOD

Photos courtesy of Brocklamation Films

7.16 Freeing and FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS

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They’ve called her Crazy and said that her life is a Circus. Now, the new documentary Framing Britney Spears attempts to unravel the mystery behind Spears’ mental health and the controversial conservatorship surrounding her estate. Is she being Overprotected because she’s Not a Girl, Not yet a Woman? Or is she Stronger than they say and stuck in a Toxic environment? This week, Judith McCartney and Kate Parkes (Elevation Pictures) drop by to chat about what we feel we’re owed by celebrities, the perils of trust and the separation of the image and the soul.

You can stream the episode on podomatic, Alexa (via Stitcher), Spotify or Amazon Podcasts! Or, you can download the ep on Apple Podcasts!

Want to continue to conversation at home?  Click the link below to download ‘Fishing for More’ — some small group questions for you to bring to those in your area.

7.16 Framing Britney SpearsDownload

Dark Circle – 40 years later, still matters.

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Does a nearly forty year old documentary still hold relevance? A newly restored HD version of Dark Circle is streaming on various outlets. The film, directed by Christopher Beaver, Judy Irving, and Ruth Landry, was shortlisted for Oscar consideration in 1983 and won an Emmy in 1989, when it finally made it to PBS as part of the POV series.

The film’s focus is plutonium—the byproduct of nuclear power generation and a key component of nuclear weapons. Plutonium is also a very dangerous contaminant. Even minute amounts can cause mutations and cancers that may take years to show up. The film moves between the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that was being constructed in California. (Since the film was made, the Rocky Flats facility has been closed and is the sight of a massive “superfund” cleanup, and the Diablo Canyon plant is in the process of closing.)

Worker holds highly radioactive plutonium button, the trigger for nuclear
weapons, in glovebox. (stock footage, public domain, still from movie)

The idea in making the film was not to search out experts or politicians, but to turn the camera on some of those most affected. In Colorado we meet a mother who worries about the ground contamination from the nearby Rocky Flats plant. When they bought the house, no one told them about the plant or about the contamination. In California we meet activists who are trying to stop the construction of the plant noting safety considerations.

The film also ventures to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to recall the human toll of the bombings of those cities, and also some of the experiments that the US military conducted with soldiers, many of whom later developed cancers (few of which the government would admit to being responsible for).

In some ways, I see the film as a bit of a time capsule. The world was much different forty years ago. This is in the midst of the Cold War with its theoretical underpinning of mutual assured destruction. We were continuing to build our stockpile of nuclear weapons. The Rocky Flats plant was turning out three new plutonium detonators a day. Nuclear power was not in its infancy, but it was still new enough to raise concerns. (That is not to say it still doesn’t. In fact, we probably have even more concerns now as then.)

Anti-nuclear activists from San Luis Obispo look at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, under construction in 1980 on an active earthquake fault. © Karen Spangenberg

Yet the film continues to speak, even though the filmmakers may not have been aware at the time of all the issues involved. Although we have reduced our nuclear arsenal, there are now other countries—including North Korea and Iraq—that have developed their own nuclear programs. After Fukushima, the world has a better picture of what kinds of catastrophes nuclear power can bring.

But perhaps the most relevant part of the film is the look at the business behind the nuclear power and defense programs. The film shows how the military-industrial complex worked to override concerns citizens had. The government, supposedly responsible to the people, was unresponsive to those who raised issues about contamination or construction problems. If the film were made today, it might talk of “corporatocracy” and the way corporations wield power over the government. (Note: one of the reasons it took seven years for the film to make it to PBS was that the filmmakers refused to remove a section that named the companies involved.)

It would have been helpful for the filmmakers to make a short update to tack on the end of the film to show the ways things have changed and remained the same. One of the new issues is that as we try to move away from fossil fuels, there is a new push for more nuclear power. It is hard to be completely anti-nuke, but it is also hard to accept it.

Dark Circle begins streaming on Apple TV, iTunes, and Amazon March 30,

Photos courtesy of First Run Features.

Martha: A Picture Story

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In Selina Miles’s debut feature documentary, Martha: A Picture Story, we enter the world of street art through Martha Cooper, who has been documenting that field for more than forty years.

Cooper was in many ways a trailblazer as a working woman photojournalist. Her early years in the business are covered only briefly. But when she gets to New York and begins working for the Post, she begins to grow in her own understanding of capturing life in the city. It is when she began taking pictures of kids at play in some of the more depressed neighborhoods, that she started seeing graffiti writers, most of whom were writing their names. At the time, the city’s subway cars were a prime target for such writing. Cooper established enough rapport with these writers that she had access to them as they worked. Even today, at age 75, she is held in great regard by the street art community worldwide, and continues to accompany masked artists as they make their clandestine works.

Besides street art, she has spent time capturing the hip hop dance scene and just the lives of people who are finding joy as they get by as best they can. It is really the people, more than the art that are her real focus. When she collaborated on the book Subway Art (now considered the “bible” of street artists), her co-author Henry Chalfant was more interested in the art itself, but Cooper cared about the artists and their process. That focus seems to be central to her own artistic process of finding the human stories in the art. That also carries over into the way Miles has put this film together. We see the art, but the main point is to get to know Cooper.

A key question that arises in the film is what constitutes art? Is street art or subway art really art, or is it vandalism? Is it free expression or criminal behavior? In the same way, what of Cooper’s photography. Is it art? Is it documentation? As we watch her with a gallery curator going through her pictures, they discuss the merits of pictures with people smiling. Does such posing negate the artistic nature of her work?

While the assumption of the film is that this is art, neither Cooper nor the film provides an apologia for the artistic genre. There is no psychologizing about what leads people to doing this. There are no discussions of themes or rebellion. The art is presented as it is for us to consider.

Martha: A Picture Story is available on VOD.

The People vs. Agent Orange

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“[It] doesn’t go away. It goes away politically/”

Most of us associate Agent Orange with the Vietnam War. The defoliant was used extensively in that war, both to eliminate the cover of jungle and to destroy crops. It also became a major veterans’ issue, when many veterans contracted cancers. But The People vs. Agent Orange, a documentary from Alan Adelson and Kate Taverna, show us the ways Agent Orange continues to affect life, both in Vietnam and the US.

The film touches on the use of the chemicals in the war, and briefly on the veterans’ issues involves. But a good part of the film focuses on the use of Agent Orange by the timber industry in Oregon. After clear cutting, in order to replant whole hillsides, the logging companies would spray with Agent Orange before replanting. For the wildlife and the people who lived in that area, serious health and reproductive problems followed. People organized and sought to end it, only to face intimidation. But eventually the courts ordered a stop to the use of one of the two chemicals that made up Agent Orange.

The film also focuses on the price that is still being paid in Vietnam. Because dioxin, part of Agent Orange, does not go away—either in the land or the body—Vietnam continues to have a very high rate of serious birth defects. As a result, Tran To Nga, a Vietnamese woman, is suing the manufacturers in a French court, in order to seek accountability. (The U.S. courts have not allowed such a suit.)

This film is a look at a very important issue, but it failed to create a significant emotional response in me. In part that is because so much of the film seems to be ancient history. The events in Oregon took place forty or more years ago. There are still effects, and one of the key components is still being used there, but the film doesn’t really bring the problem to the present, except with the children with deformities in Vietnam.

The film also fails to provide all the links needed to fully make its case. For example, the chemical that includes dioxin is not longer used in Oregon, but the film fails to provide sufficient evidence that the remaining chemical being used is also damaging to the environment. (I don’t doubt it is, but the film doesn’t prove it.)

Because it is so much based in the past, the film can’t really serve as a call to arms against an injustice. Nga’s attempt to hold companies accountable is a noble effort, but it’s not really something we can get behind. The real problem, which the film doesn’t really get into, is an overall inability to hold companies liable for the harm they do. This is really a political issue as much as a legal one. That is an area that people can seek change. But that’s not where the film leads us.

The People vs. Agent Orange is available via virtual cinema through local theaters.

Reporting from Slamdance – Docs of Empowerment

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Time to take a look at some of the feature length docs showing at Slamdance. I’m pulling some films together here from a couple of sections, but the films I’m looking at for this report are about community, voice, and empowerment, either as a group or individuals.

Jason Polevoi’s A Tiny Ripple of Hope is making its world premiere at Slamdance. The film follows activist Jahmal Cole as he seeks to influence the lives of high school students and bring change to Chicago through his non-profit “My Block, My Hood, My City.” The foundational idea is that for many young people in poorer sections of Chicago, they only know their immediate surroundings. By taking them other places, even within the city (but also elsewhere) it broadens their view of the world and provides hope of better life. As the film progresses we see how the task he has taken up brings a great deal of personal stress into his life: his house in in foreclosure, his marriage is in trouble, he must work through depression.

It is clear that this organization has a wonderful effect on some of the lives it touches, even though it is a very limited program. The title comes from a quote from Robert Kennedy, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…” Ripples of hope such as Jahmal Cole brings to Chicago can grow into larger waves. It’s not just about what we see happening in this film, but about what it might inspire us to do in our own block, hood, and city

End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock by Shannon Kring is also making its world premiere at the festival. In 2016, Native American peoples joined together to try to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. The film follows some of the women who were involved in leading the protests that gained national attention. The tribal complaints were about the danger of the pipeline fouling the water for the reservation (and many others downstream), as well as damage being done to sacred heritage sites. A key objection was that the process did not respect the sovereignty of the Lakota people. As the protests gain momentum, we see the pushback from the government and police. Whereas the protestors were unarmed, the police used lots of pepper spray and “non-lethal” ammunition against them.

Along with documenting the protests (which also attracted supporters from a wide range of non-Native groups, including clergy), the film chronicles the abusive way the government has treated indigenous people throughout history. It notes that it wasn’t until 1985 that native people had the right to raise their own families—not having children taken away for schooling and raised without cultural contact. Eventually, under President Trump, the pipeline was completed, but the fight of those involved continues in many ways.

What began as a once-a-week ten week program for six African-American middle school girls in East Baltimore is the focus of Anatomy of Wings, directed by Kristen D’Andrea Hollander and Nikiea Redmond. The program was run by a local arts college and taught the girls video skills. They discovered that the cameras not only recorded the world around them, it created a way for them to be heard. Through the years, the girls created a very intimate bond between themselves, their mentors, and others who joined the group.

This film was filmed over an 11 year period to show bits of the important issues they shared with each other and the ways this helped to form them as women as they entered adulthood, some becoming mothers, some going to college, others into jobs.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Fesival.

Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence – Safe at Home

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Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence focuses its lens on the life and impact of Kansas City social worker Bobbi Jo Reed. Having turned to drinking and drugs at a young age, Bobbi Jo’s life spiraled further out of control. Left broken and destitute by a life of abuse and prostitution, Bobbi Jo rediscovered her spiritual faith. Now in her mid-30s, Bobbi Jo felt called to use her newfound strength to help others in need. With the development of the ministry at Healing House, Bobbi Jo and her team have seen amazing results by helping more than 8,000 men and women transformed by discovering the power of faith, love and family.

Written and directed by Brent L. Jones, Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence is a powerful documentary of how God can use one person’s shattered story to bring hope and healing to many others. With an emphasis on one particular person and their impact, Jones keeps the film simple and straightforward with its focus. This is not a film about the nature of addiction or the larger problems that plague Kansas City but rather, as the title suggests, the testimony of one person and the impact that they have had with others. By exploring Bobbi Jo’s past and how it led to the development of Healing House, Jones seems to step back and simply allows the story to tell itself. In the process, the film feels very personal as Bobbi Jo is given the freedom to be open about her past battles with addiction without hinderance.

What struck me most about Bobbi Jo’s story is that she’s so… ordinary. For Bobbi Jo, her success lies not in her grand public speaking or any amazing skills. Instead, Jones presents her as a woman who has seen the worst parts of herself and found redemption in her faith. In fact, for the first third of the film, Jones allows Bobbi Jo to share her life’s narrative in grand detail. Having suffered with addiction and prostitution since her youth, she rediscovered her faith and found the strength to ‘get clean’ in her mid-30s. However, even after all her struggles that she has overcome, there’s a humility within Bobbi Jo that Jones allows to come to the surface. 

She understands what it means to feel lost… and she’s determined to help others who feel the same today.

While it may seem like a cliché to suggest that Bobbi Jo is fearless in her pursuit of helping others, it does seem to apply here. (If you’re unsure about that particular word choice, a story about her confronting a man with an AK-47 on Thanksgiving may justify it to you…) Coming out of addiction herself, she understands the needs of those on the street and she has thrown open her doors to reach as many as possible. From the moment that they arrive at Healing House, new residents are welcomed ‘home’ and treated with love and respect. (For many of the residents, this is the first time that they can say such a thing.) Essential to the foundation of the ministry is that this will be a place of safety where they can heal. They’re given clean clothes, a new room and help acquiring their personal identification.

Most importantly though, they’re given a fresh start.

You see, the beauty of Bobbi Jo’s story is her stunning commitment to the broken. By recognizing that all people have value, she is able to accept them with their flaws and see hope for them moving forward. With a passion to stand alongside addicts, ex-convicts, prostitutes and more, Influence shows the incredible power and influence that Healing House has in allowing its residents to have all that they need to begin again. Through each testimony with the film, Influence highlights the fact that Bobbi Jo is willing to help anyone who truly wants to get well. While not everyone succeeds in breaking free of their past issues, there are countless others whose lives have been turned around by Bobbi Jo and her amazing work at Healing House. To them, she has become far more than another community service worker.

She is their mother, friend and pastor.

While Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence may not be a flashy documentary, it does provide some well-deserved press for an organization that doesn’t seem to be well known outside of its sphere of influence. Anchored by her faith, Bobbi Jo and her team continue to build something amazing in Kansas City that changes lives on a daily basis.

Maybe this film will help change some more.

Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence is now available on VOD.

Reporting from Slamdance – Holy Frit

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“It can’t be the biggest shitty window in the world. It has to be the biggest and the best.”

Holy Frit, an amazing documentary directed by Justin Monroe, is making its world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival. It is the story of the making of the world’s largest stained glass window to go into the new facility of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. It was to be 100’ long and 40’ high. (That’s a little longer and a little narrower than a basketball court.)

The window was created by the Judson Studios, a family-owned company going back generations. Tim Carey, who had worked as a painter was inspired to work in this medium. When the church was looking for companies that could make such a window, Judson was one of the few in the world they considered. Carey made the presentation and the company got the contract. The only problem was, in spite of all their experience, no one really knew how to make such a window.

And so began a three year project that brought together Carey, company owner David Judson, and stained glass innovator Narcissus Quagliata. It is sometimes great cooperation, and at times a clash of egos. They had to learn new ways of making the glass. And they also raced against the deadline to get the 161 4’x5’ panels created. It was a challenging task, but one, when you see the finished product was well worth it.

The process of making a stained glass window is interesting enough on its own. But to see the work and artistry that went into this project makes it even more intriguing. And artistry is what this film is really about. As we see some of the panels come together we can appreciate each one. When the face of Christ is revealed we are in awe. And to see it in its finished form is astounding.

The window includes various bits of biblical stories to keep the window within the linage of church stained glass used to educate and proclaim the gospel. It also includes a number of people throughout church history who form a “cloud of witnesses”. But the dominant figure in the window is the risen Christ.

At one point in the film, Quagliata mentions that when one enters into such a project, they will come out a different person. We clearly see that in Carey’s case. He grows in many ways as he goes through this, but it also takes a toll on him and his family. It also takes a toll on his relationship with the studio he works for.

The film’s one shortcoming would be that it only briefly touches on the ethical/theological/economic question of churches spending such large amounts of money on art projects such as this. I am not one of those who would argue that this is not an appropriate use of money within a church context, but I certainly know people who would raise the issue. Those issues cannot be easily dismissed.

@Sundance: Rebel Hearts

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“Clearly we were in a boat that needed desperately to be rocked.”

The 1960s was a turbulent time. Society was struggling with the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and the early groanings of the women’s movement. For many, the church (especially the Roman Catholic Church) was the place they expected stability, tradition, an unchanging constant. But it was not to be. Rebel Heart, from director Pedro Kos, is part of the U.S. Documentary section at Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles a group of nuns that sought to serve people and be relevant to their times, but ran into heavy opposition from the church hierarchy.

The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary ran a college in Hollywood. As the 60s came there were many changes in the air. Those nuns who taught at the college were all well educated and were well aware of the ideas that were current. When the changes that followed Vatican II began to take hold, the order entered into contemplation of what it would mean for them. They began to make changes in their daily lives, including not wearing the traditional habit, and choosing the work they would do.

The archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal McIntyre, did not take well to the changes or the attitude of the Immaculate Heart sisters. McIntyre was a very conservative church leader. He was also very authoritarian in his approach to leading the diocese. It was inevitable that there would be a conflict.

The film focuses most of its time on what was going on within the Immaculate Heart community. We see the nuns working to do the ministries they saw themselves called to. But the film also gives us a good social setting for understanding what was happening. It was certainly a time of great social upheaval. At least one of the nuns from Immaculate Heart marched at Selma. Another nun, Corita Kent, was becoming a well known artist. The changes brought by Vatican II were seen by many as fresh air coming into the church, but by others as dangerous ideas. The nuns of Immaculate Heart had to come to terms for themselves where they fit with all of this. And for many it was a very difficult decision about how they would live their lives.

The film serves as an interesting case study of the struggles the church must continuously deal with in a changing world. It also reflects the struggles between freedom and authoritarianism both in and out of the church. To what extent should we bow to tradition and structure, and how much to innovation?

It is not only the Catholic Church that has struggled with change. It seems a truism that pastors will get either of two disparaging answers when they suggest a change: We tried that before, or we’ve never done it that way. Of course, we know that the church has never really been unchanging. But it never seems to be easy.

Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute.

The Reunited States: Bridging the Divide

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A few weeks ago, a lawless mob stormed the United States Capitol in anger over the Presidential election. Two weeks later a newly inaugurated President Biden said, “This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge. And unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you we will not fail. We have never, ever, ever, ever failed in America when we’ve acted together.” It is easy to call for unity, but can a nation, so utterly divided, come together? Ben Rekhi’s documentary The Reunited States offers some visions of how to bridge the divide.

The film focuses on a handful of people who seek a new way. We meet a former Republican operative from Texas, who has had enough of the strife. Along with his wife and children, he sells his home, buys an RV and sets off to meet people in every state to hear their stories. We also meet the mother of the woman who was killed when a man drove into a crowd in Charlottesville. She was never very political, but she knows that her grief grows out of the anger that fills America. We meet the founder of the Millennial Action Project which brings together young state and federal legislators of both parties from around the country to connect them to each other and make reaching across the aisle more likely. And we meet an independent candidate running for governor in Kansas as he campaigns, seeking to say there are alternatives to just the blue and red divisions.

The common thread that runs through all of these experiences is hearing the stories of others. We see that especially in the journey of David and Erin Leaverton, the couple who traveled for a year. They would come to an area and invite people to dinner to talk, to listen, to empathize and understand. They met people very different from themselves. They heard stories that touched them. And we see as their trip progresses that it is changing them. Their friends and family fear that they will turn Democrat, but it seems more like they are becoming very independent. And they believe that it is through talking to people with different ideas that we can understand without anger.

The most hopeful part for me was the Millennial Action Project. For all the ridicule that has been directed at the Millennial Generation, the young men and women we meet here, those who have entered politics early on, have visions that often are not limited by political ideology, but rather by a calling to serve people in their state and nation. If they can connect to one another in the MAP settings, the relationships they build can be a way of breaking the partisan divide.

But the film is not blind to the challenge of overcoming the divisions that have grown for decades. It wants to show the world that there are options and that there are ways that each of us can take part in groups and activities that seek to reunite us rather than fuel further division. If they inspire viewers to become active in reconciliation efforts, the film will have done a valuable service.

I’ll leave with a bit more from President Biden’s Inaugural Address, words that I’m sure the filmmakers and participants in this film will applaud: “And so today at this time in this place, let’s start afresh, all of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another, see one another, show respect to one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.”

The Reunited States is available through virtual cinema via local theaters, and will soon be available on VOD.