After three seasons in 2024 and 2025, Faith and Film is moving to Film Alley, formerly known as City LIghts, 420 Wolf Ranch Parkway, Georgetown, TX 78628.
Film Alley is not a drive in theater, but this series makes it a dive-in theater, as participants will explore underlying morals and religious worldviews often disguised in great films. These classes equip Viewer-Critics to recognize and respond to the competing ideologies promoted within popular culture.
Another change is the series is becoming a monthly series instead of weekly. The 2024 spring series will be scheduled for: February 2, March 2, April 6, and May 4. Tenantively, a Fall series will be scheduled September 7, October 5, November 2, and December 7. Check back in January 2025 for registration in formation and for a list of films and respondents..
A: You may see a church from time to time offering a class in conversational English for immigrants—English as a second language—to help them become more fluent in English. Essentially, the Faith and Film classes are entertainment as a second language—helping improve the media literacy and fluency of anyone who watches movies. Zion Lutheran Church and School of Walburg has contracted with Parabolic Media to curate a series of classes for anyone interested in registering.
Q: Why not call it Christianity and Film?
A: While this series will certainly be filtered through the lens of Christianity, alternative faiths and worldviews are the foundation of many good movies—even some that are labeled as Christian movies. In fact, virtually all movies promote the filmmaker’s values and beliefs.
Q: Why should I improve my media literacy?
A: Dr. Robert Johnson (Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Seminary) has stated that the cinema’s storytellers have become the new priests of our culture. As such, the movie theater has become another great competitor for the church because great movies inspire (or disturb) people in profound ways. “Consciously or unconsciously, all filmmakers have an ethical purpose in their work. All movies have a moral. In both obvious and subtle ways, filmmakers infuse their worldview into the story. If you think about it, the movie is the filmmaker’s prayer.” (quoted from the series’ curriculum, The Filmmaker’s Prayer).
Q: What if I am not a Christian?
A: Our primary aim is to uncover and compare the beliefs promoted in the movie to a mainstream Christian worldview. Admittedly, our discussion leaders will likely interpret the film through a lens compatible with relatively conservative Lutheran theology. However, people of all faiths and religions are invited and encouraged to share their insights. There will be no judgment.
Q: Where and when will the classes be held?
A: Responding to this need in our community, Parabolic Media is finalizing arrangements with Film Alley on Wolf Ranch Parkway in Georgetown to use the theater as a suitable classroom. This enables us to examine films in their most natural and powerful state. Unlike a movie you merely watch for entertainment, we include a discussion—a careful examination and reflection after the screening that will help us all understand the shared experience.
The spring 2025 classes are scheduled for the first Sundays in February, March, April, and May, starting at 5:30 p.m. and ending sometime around 8:30 p.m. (depending on the length of the film).
Q: What movies will you examine?
A: Movies are carefully selected for this course. Participants will receive a study guide for each film to guide them through both the obvious and subtle religious themes and faith expressions that can be recognized in the movie. Check back soon for study guides for the films selected for spring 2025.
Q: Will you examine R-rated films?
A: Our approach is not to ask if we should show films like these but to ask if these more difficult scenes and themes somehow make the film exempt from critical examination. We find that many R-rated films need close scholarly, theological, and philosophical analysis. However, if you normally avoid such films, you can simply skip the class that session. Or, like the scientist, don goggles, gloves, and a lab coat when examining such artifacts.
Q: How does the informal class differ from a traditional college class?
A: Like a college class, a curriculum is provided to assist in learning. Far beyond a simple appreciation for a film’s aesthetics, participants will fully examine their personal and societal responses to the worldviews promoted in popular movies. Learners will be equipped and inspired to identify, interpret, and respond to these cultural artifacts.
Q: Will I have homework if I attend the informal class?
A: No. We only suggest that you become at least marginally familiar with the curriculum material provided (a digital copy of a book). In our discussion, you can add your voice to the mix or just quietly enjoy the conversation.
Q: Do I get academic credit?
A: The class is for your own edification. However, those who attend all eight classes planned for 2025 will be eligible to receive a certificate of completion upon request.
Q: What is the cost of the course?
A: We do not sell tickets as an entertainment venue would, but there is a modest fee to help cover the costs of the curriculum and rental expenses.
Spring Series, Single Participant (up to four nights): $15
Spring Series, Group—up to Four People (up to four nights): $25
The fee structure is set up to encourage attendance at the entire series and to bring family, friends, and neighbors. We also encourage patrons to consider a modest gift to help sustain and grow the series.
REGISTRATION WILL BE AVAILABLE IN EARLY JANUARY 2025
Q: May I bring someone with me?
A: We highly encourage everyone to invite other learners to spread media literacy in our community. Consider inviting friends from Bible studies, home groups, friends from work, or family members. Again, all attendees must RSVP so we can make sure seats are available. All participants will receive a digital copy of the curriculum. (The RSVP link is not available until January.)
Q: Who and what are Movie Missionaries?
A: Our goal is to make literate viewer-critics who can put the story in proper perspective and help others do the same. The class is necessary because most viewers can only unconsciously process the messages filmmakers embed in their stories.
We are recruiting people who have a passion for helping their friends, family members, and neighbors grow in their literacy. Even like active Christians from time to time, the de-churched and unchurched may also struggle to find their purpose in life. For many of us, bringing our guests to the theater will be easier than persuasding them to attend church on Sunday. Literally, these movie missionaries will be taking the Gospel to the public square.
Do you know anyone who would rather talk about movies that spiritual matters? Watch this humorous video.
Q: What or who is Parabolic Media?
A: Dr. Philip Hohle of Parabolic Media is a trained scholar in the study of how people interpret movies. He has published and presented on this topic through the International Society for the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI). He also has taught film interpretation and media law at the university level. With the help of other scholars in the area, he hosted the series Cinema and Religion at the Moviehouse & Eatery in Austin for eight years. His book, The Filmmaker’s Prayer, was written to serve as the curriculum for this series.
Q: What if the weather is bad? What if no seats are left?
A: Parabolic Media will send announcements to the email address you used in your RSVP if the event is canceled due to weather (or any other reason). Likewise, if RSVPs show that the theater will reach capacity, any additional persons submitting RSVPs will be sent an email informing them that no seats are left.
Q: How do I contact you?
A: You are welcome to email Philip Hohle with additional questions anytime: philip@parabolicmedia.com
. . . According to Barna and Gallup polls, most of the residents in the U.S. are religious—or at least, we claim Christianity or some other mainstream faith-based worldview. Is it not strange then, that filmmakers often avoid addressing anything serious about religion in their movies? At times, religion does play some positive minor role in the plot, but religiosity is more often the cause of the antagonist’s opposition to the less-religious protagonist than the reverse. It has become self-evident; religion is too complicated or fragmented for a scriptwriter to use as background for her characters. In making a character too religious, the writer runs the risk of losing some of the consubstantiation a viewer needs in order to like a character.
In spite of filmmaker’s reluctance to make the celluloid sacred, I will argue in this book that films are full of religion. Both unconsciously and consciously, filmmakers infuse religion into the story in subtle ways, which can be missed unless the viewer is able to interpret the film on a less conventional level. Furthermore, I propose that if the viewer is not aware of the filmmaker’s religious sense-making within their created world, they are more subject to influence or even conversion. Considering the power of film, one can argue that the filmmaker is today’s tent-revival evangelist. But of course, most of this influence is worked in the unconscious and not always recognized in a conventional read of the film.
In reading on, there will be some terms I use often that help shape the argument. As a matter of fact, Cinema & Religion is the sequel to Lenses, my previous book revealing ten perspectives one can use to interpret and make sense of movie narratives. . . .
[section omitted]
. . . This brings us back to the fundamental premise of this book. Films are full of ideology, and that ideology is often an identifiable worldview that is promoted as passionately as any religion. In these pages, we will compare the values, assumptions, and beliefs represented in films that, not only entertain us, but they comfort or disrupt us; they instruct and motivate us; they help us make sense of our lives. I hope that sounds like religion to you.
This book will:
Identify the key religious themes commonly found in narratives.
Show how these themes can be found and examined in a film.
Illustrate how the religious perspective will reinterpret the role and function of characters, the meaning of signs, and even the plot found in a movie.
Help the reader compare and contrast the ideological messages some popular movies to the divine story in Christianity.
Advance your emerging fluency as a lay critic, becoming more confident in recognizing the ideology and theology of a film.
Help you find a voice in communicating a case for its value or lack of value to our world. Ultimately, you can help shape the conversation over the film’s contribution to our culture’s grand narrative.
Motivate you to respond to an exigence (an urgent issue) raised by the film viewing experience.
Affirm and strengthen your appreciation for the power of film and the ability of the filmmaker to bring the viewer to experience transcendence in the story.
…This remarkable influence is why it is so vital that viewers learn to read film. It is not so we can all have the same interpretation. I think of the old school literature professor who refuses to recognize any alternative interpretation of a classic poem. Recall the first literature class John Keating has with his students in Dead Poet’s Society4. Keating has his students rip out pages in the textbook that proposed the goodness and truth of a poem could be measured scientifically—leading to a singular, objective interpretation.
Conversely, the lessons in this book serve more like a guide to make us more sensitive—more aware of both the effect proposed by the filmmaker (e.g., the film craft as a noun) as well as the affect film has on us (as in a verb). In becoming literate, we become aware of the power we give film. But do not worry that your nuanced sensitivity will spoil your enjoyment—not like how a backstage tour of Disneyland diminishes the magic. Instead, I argue our literacy makes film even more powerful. We become more aware of the subtleties most viewers miss. Knowing more about the craft makes one appreciate it so much more when the film is indeed well made.
Becoming fluent means you can help others toward a higher appreciation of such well-made movies. Fluency for me means one can interpret film for the benefit of others—to heighten their own literacy. This increased competency can mean you will more fully love the good movies you love. Likewise, you will help open other’s eyes to seeing disruptive films for what they really are. To our friends, parents, children, and the stranger in line at the film festival— we are critics. And the more fluent we are, the more we provide useful lenses for others to use.
Lenses are what this book is finally all about—ten sets of glasses one can try on in order to make sense of a film. Metaphorically, this book is an exercise in showing the changes of hue and texture each lens affords. Thus, selecting an appropriate lens becomes critical to a fulfilling and helpful critique of a film. Not only will each lens reveal a different story in the same movie, each person also employs personal filters that may blur or sharpen what the filmmaker intended. Being aware of one’s filters can reveal something about us as they simultaneously serve to help illuminate the film…
4. Dead Poet’s Society, directed by Peter Weir (1989; Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2012), BluRay.
From IMDB [Fox Searchlight] “Writer director Taika Waititi (THOR: RAGNAROK, HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE), brings his signature style of humor and pathos to his latest film, JOJO RABBIT, a World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy (Roman Griffin Davis as JoJo) whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.” PG-13, 1 hr. 48 min. View trailer here.
Parabolic Media is pleased to announce the return of Lenses, the popular Informal Classes for the Community starting Monday, September 9th. 6:30 PM at The Moviehouse & Eatery. For the Fall 2019 LENSES Series, there is no registration fee. Simply purchase your ticket at the box office or online on the Moviehouse & Eatery website. The series runs Sept. 9 through Nov. 18 (excluding Veterans Day on Nov. 11).
New for the Fall 2019 season, participants will be viewing CURRENT films being offered by The Moviehouse & Eatery. Due to fluctuations in distribution, the movie, start time, and theater number will be announced no earlier than one week prior to each class. Watch our web page for updates. Note that the opinions expressed in LENSES do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moviehouse’s owners, managers, or employees.
Participants will explore and practice ten valuable lenses that can make them fluent in their media consumption—better at making sense of the messages and meanings behind their favorite movies. Improve your media literacy—become fluent in reading popular film.
The Lenses series is parallel to the Cinema and Religion series offered at The Moviehouse each spring. Focusing on film, the two classes provide examinations of this compelling media form in the context of an actual movie theater with an audience—the most pure and powerful viewing environment.
As a whole, those who selected the narrative short films for the 2018 SXSW festival are apparently obsessed with themes of gender identity. I have selected a number of these shorts to analyze for the deeper questions they raise—along with the obvious conflicts and concerns more conventionally found in the story. It is often the less noticeable films that make for the richest philosophical discussion.
Viewers might consider this film as another in the genre of anti-hero comedy. When it is difficult to place the actions in some framework of reality, the plot becomes absurd, and absurdity can only be placed in the comic genre. Often, the absurdity comes from a juxtaposition of ideas that seem incompatible—in this case, the good-hearted criminal.
It is refreshing to see well-developed African-American characters in a narrative, and this story is one of the best in avoiding stereotypes. Not surprisingly, Jinn is written and produced by a group of emerging Black filmmakers in the U.S. What adds to the quality of this film is that the narrative provides a refreshing take on the troubled encounters the whole world seems to have with religion these days.
Another in the science fiction genre where an alien race brings a blessing to a troubled earth, First Light has some interesting company. The film Arrival is one good example. In many of these tales, only certain characters have the sensitivity to hear or understand the message brought by these alien angels of mercy.
First Light is set in a town situated somewhere out West. Two teenagers are brought together after a strange set of events one night at a party outside of town. Few people in the town seem to be aware of, much less concerned about, the patterns of strange lights that appeared in the sky, Continue reading Alien Incarnation→