INTER FAITH WEEK 2011, DAY 2: FAITHS FILM FESTIVAL

Here are the programme notes I put together for A Serious Man, showing this evening at Phoenix Square as part of the Faiths Film Festival, celebrating Inter Faith Week and helping mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of Leicester Council of Faiths. At least they're drawn from more than one source, which is an improvement on the notes I "put together" for Little Buddha last night.

A SERIOUS MAN (2009) 

Directors Ethan Coen, Joel Coen 

Writers Joel Coen, Ethan Coe

106 min 

Cast Michael Stuhlbarg, Rixchard Kind, Sari Lenick

Plot summary (from Internet Movie Database)

Bloomington, Minnesota, 1967: Jewish physics lecturer Larry Gopnik is a serious and a very put-upon man. His daughter is stealing from him to save up for a nose job,his pot-head son, who gets stoned at his own bar-mitzvah, only wants him round to fix the T.V. aerial and his useless brother Arthur is an unwelcome house guest. But both Arthur and Larry get turfed out into a motel when Larry's wife Judy, who wants a divorce, moves her lover, Sy, into the house and even after Sy's death in a car crash they are still there. With lawyers' bills mounting for his divorce, Arthur's criminal court appearances and a land feud with a neighbour Larry is tempted to take the bribe offered by a student to give him an illegal exam pass mark. And the rabbis he visits for advice only dole out platitudes. Still God moves in mysterious - and not always pleasant - ways, as Larry and his family will find out.

A Serious Man: Coens change tack with masterly fable of a crumbling life (Andrew Pulver, The Guardian, 28 October 2009) 

The Coen brothers may just have made their masterpiece with this, their 14th feature and yet another hairpin-bend change of direction, which has been their trademark for their entire career. 

Two films back they were prowling the Texas badlands in a gruesome tale of blood and revenge in No Country for Old Men; then they turned to weightless farce in the entertaining Burn After Reading.Here they are heading to the suburbia of 1960s midwestern America for an elaborate, slippery, fable that feels, strange as it may sound, like a novel that Saul Bellow or Bernard Malamud never quite got around to writing. 

A Serious Man starts off odd, and gets odder. The first five minutes is entirely in Yiddish, a Coenised version of a shtetl folk-horror tale featuring a bearded old man who may or may not be a dybbuk (wandering spirit). Suffice to say, the Coens don't muck about when it comes to the use of stabbing weapons. 

Then we flip forward from the old country to the new world, to where our protagonist, Larry Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg) is your archetypal harassed and neurotic Jewish-American college professor.His apparently unimpeachable lifestyle is crumbling rapidly: one of his students is trying to bribe his way through exams, his application for tenure is being undermined by ­ anonymous threatening letters, his deadbeat brother is sleeping on the sofa and attracting the attention of the police, and – this is the killer – his wife is planning to leave him for another man, one of those swinging middle-aged types who embraced the permissive culture with desperate fervency.To offset this Gopnik goes looking for answers from his religion, but unlike Judah Rosenthal in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, he does not come up against the blank wall of a  Godless universe; what he encounters are perplexing rabbis telling him baffling parables that just leave him feeling more and more confused. 

It's this refusal to neatly resolve their narrative that gives A Serious Man its distinctive flavour; it has the same open-ended spirit of The Graduate, an authentic classic of late 60s Jewish-American culture. (A Serious Man could easily have been conceived as a sequel to that film, with Gopnik as a grown-up Benjamin Braddock.) 

The Coens, though, don't quite do deeply felt alienation like anyone else. Despite the opaque story line, their film is a glittering, perfectly honed artifice; but what pushes it into the Coen premier league is the sense that, as with Fargo, there's something very personal going on here. 

It's not autobiographical exactly, but the Minnesota setting is the Coens' own childhood universe, and they revved up for their barmitzvahs at pretty much the same time as Gopnik's son, Danny. The Coens, so normally elusive, have let the mask slip a bit. It's  paid wonderful dividends.

A Serious Man is being shown as part of Phoenix Square’s short season of films with themes or subject matter of religion or belief as part of Inter Faith Week 2011 (being held throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Sunday 20 – Saturday 26 November). Our Faiths Film Festival is being promoted in association with Leicester Council of Faiths, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary during this period.

George M Ballentyne, Equality & Diversity Officer, Leicester Council of Faiths

Number of paying customers for A Serious Man this evening: 28 

FAITHS FILM FESTIVAL FINAL FIVE

This morning the schedule for the film festival at Phoenix Square during Inter Faith Week is made public. Phoenix Square’s November brochure is published online (printed version to follow in two days). I've been particularly keen to see the finalised programme, so that I can get the details into the flyer that we’re having printed this week, listing our main activities during Inter Faith Week.

So, how does the final programme for Leicester's first Faiths Film Festival shape up against what I've been hoping for? At first sight, the result could be thought disappointing. But it ain't necessarily so.

When I first enquired about the possibility of Phoenix Square screening a short season of faith-related films at the same time last year, it was just a wish - and rather formless, as wishes tend to be. A couple of months ago, when making a more formal approach to Phoenix Square, I would have considered it a triumph to get five films on. At one point, I as discussing with Andy Jones (Programme Manager at Phoenix Square) the viability of showing as many as 14 titles: two per day throughout the week. As is the way with Leicester Council of Faiths, we were trying to represent each of our member communities equally. But as you can imagine, faithful reader, it's harder to find movies about, by or from some of those communities than others. I put out an APB, by email, social media and word of mouth, seeking recommendations for titles. Some of the suggestions were innovative, inventive, inspired – although some left me wondering if the respondents had ever been to the movies themselves or even knew what a feature film was. Sifting through a considerable amount of dross, there were a few nuggets of gold.

The ideal situation (from our point of view) would have seen two movies screened per day (half of them in Screen 2, which seats 120 and half in the Screen Room, which seats 30; half of them in English and half in another language with English sub-titles; half of them commercially proven and the other half more of a risk). Phoenix Square has whittled this down to a final five, as listed in the brochure.

I've learned a lot about how a cinema like Phoenix Square goes about its business. It's certainly not a matter of simply presenting a wishlist and expecting to get everything you want. The eventual choice was based on several factors, e.g.

• availability in suitable format for projection;
• having been passed by the British Board of Film Classification and granted an age certificate;
• ownership of current screening rights in the UK by a trading distributor (some of the proposed films have never been licensed for public screening in the UK, while screening rights for others have long lapsed).

So after all that, here's the final selection of films:

Sun 20: Little Buddha (Buddhist - obviously) 

Mon 21: A Serious Man (Jewish) 

Thu 24: Life in a Day (illustrating the Bahá'í principle of world unity) 

Fri 25: My Name is Khan (Muslim - with Hindu connections too) 

Sat 26: Lourdes (Christian)

I should stress here that the final choice was made by Phoenix Square – and in the end, they’ve gone with those films most likely to get patrons out of their homes on a cold dark November evening and parting with £7 for their ticket. Three of the five have been shown at Phoenix Square and deserve another go-round there.

I saw two of these films during their theatrical release (A Serious Man and Lourdes). I've already blogged about the latter.

We’ve been asked to write copy for the A4 cribsheets that are available free at the time of screening. On these we can say something about the relevance of the film to the respective faith communities, something about Inter Faith Week and something about the Council of Faiths. We were also offered, initially, the opportunity for an introductory talk about each film, of no more than three minutes in length. I haven't pursued this - so far.

I would like to find out if we can get a slide shown before each of the films, saying something like:

This film is being screened as part of Phoenix Square's Faiths Film Festival, presented in association with Leicester Council of Faiths, during Inter Faith Week.

A few too many "Faiths" in there? I'll work on it.

Phoenix Square's online brochure has a page devoted to the Faiths Film Festival. This web page has a slide show of still from four of the  movies, each with Leicester Council of Faiths logo added in the bottom right hand corner. That looks very nice. And there’s a paragraph of copy, written by me, linking the Faiths Film Festival with the Council of Faiths 25^th anniversary:

The third national Inter Faith Week is being celebrated from Sunday 20 to Saturday 26 November. Leicester has a positive and widespread reputation for the diverse and cohesive nature of its faith and cultural communities, so when Leicester Council of Faiths asked if Phoenix Square would host the first Faiths Film Festival – of course we said yes! This varied selection of movies showcasing faith, religion and belief also marks the 25th anniversary of Leicester Council of Faiths – which has been working to promote trust, understanding and cooperation among the city’s communities since 1986.

I hope that this is a success and that we get to do it again next year. Now it’s up to you, faithful reader. If you’re within the catchment area of Phoenix Square, then come along to one or more of these screenings during Inter Faith Week, show your support and enjoy a good film with our blessing!

LEICESTER'S FIRST FAITHS FILM FEST GETS GO-AHEAD!

Meeting at Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre this afternoon with Andy Jones, Programme Manager. From this point on, the proposed Faiths Film Festival during National Inter Faith Week (Sun 20 - Sat 26 November) is a goer! I've set my hopes on this one for ages now (certainly since well before National Inter Faith Week last year); I'm delighted that we've got the green light now.

Phoenix Square often features such festival presentations, often linked to local activities, events and occasions.  Our Faiths Film Fest will be included as part of Phoenix Square's regular public programme, promoted through its printed and online brochure, double-badged in association with Leicester Council of Faiths, showing our logo.

The films will not be put on  for members of the faith communities alone. The intention is certainly not that the "Buddhist" films (for example) should only appeal to Buddhists. The films have to be commercially viable, available for screening in a decent format and the kind of movie that will bring in up to 75 patrons (for Screen 2) or 30 patrons (if shown in the smaller Screen Room). Proper films, in other words - accessible and appealing to the kind of audience that uses Phoenix Square (and definitely not any kind of propaganda material).

We're hoping to be able to schedule at least one film from each of our eight member faiths. As much as possible, I'm taking recommendations from people who adhere to these faiths themselves, so that they can get some buy-in from the communities. It's not our desire to be contentious or controversial, but we also have no wish to be comfortable or bland.

Here are some of the titles we hope to be able to show:

• A Serious Man
• Little Buddha
• Lourdes
• The Message
• My Name is Khan
• Phörpa (The Cup)
• The Robe
• Ushpizen

That's two Buddhist titles, two Christian, two Jewish and two Muslim. We're on the lookout now for two each that would work from Bahá'ís, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs. If any of them can't recommend a suitable title, we may be able to show something that exemplifies or illustrates a theme that chimes with that particular faith community (e.g. on the theme of the unity of humankind to stand for Bahá'ís, on the theme of non-violence for Jains, since there's a paucity of films directly related to those faiths). Three of the films listed above are in languages other than English.

This week-long event will be a strong complement to the exhibition in Highcross and a distinctive contribution to this national occasion, which will be celebrated for only the third time in 2011.

Recommendations of movies for inclusion in the first Faiths Film Festival will be gratefully received, faithful reader: all reasonable suggestions considered.

Barney's Version

One to add to the list of movies where the theme of religion is writ large; one to to keep in mind for the proposed short season at Phoenix Square during National Inter Faith Week in November. Mind you, it would probsably be easy to do a whole week of quality contemporary Jeiwsh-based films (what with this and the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man). Here's Philip French's Observer review (published in the paper Sun 30 Jan), lifted from the website:

Mordecai Richler, the Canadian novelist who died 10 years ago at the age of 70, worked for many years in Britain writing screenplays and contributing to our literary life. He wrote a series of hilarious, partly autobiographical novels about Montreal's Jewish community, two of which – The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Joshua Then and Now – he adapted for the cinema. His books are quite close to those of the Canadian-born Saul Bellow, though funnier and less self-regarding; the last one, the characteristically sprawling Barney's Version, has now been filmed with a wonderful central performance from Paul Giamatti.

He plays Barney Panofsky (Richler probably borrowed the surname from Erwin Panofsky, the art historian who pioneered the study of iconography), a Montreal entrepreneur who starts out in the 1970s supporting his bohemian friends in Rome as a dealer in olive oil before returning home to work as a Jewish fundraiser and the producer of a popular but terrible TV series through his company Totally Unnecessary Productions. Along the way, he has three failed marriages to very different Jewish women, though the third one is extremely happy until he manages through his drinking to screw everything up.

It's an immensely engaging picture about a flawed mensch, with strong supporting performances from, among others, Dustin Hoffman as Barney's father, and walk-on roles for Canadian film‑makers David Cronenberg, Denys Arcand and Atom Egoyan.

Of Gods and Men

This is one of a growing number of films that have piqued my interest for their grown-up, reflective and thought-provoking attitude toward religion and spirituality, alongside two great movies I saw last year: Jessica Hausner's Lourdes and the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Here's the plot synopsis as published on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb):

"Brotherhood. Religions. Faith. Martyrdom. Love. French monks are living, working and praying in a catholic monastery in Algeria in the '90s (civil war). It starts of showing how the Islamic locals and the christian priests coexist in harmony. The situation with the Algerian Muslim-terrorists becomes worse. They will have to decide whether to stay or go back to France. They are forced to question themselves and their mission very profoundly. Their sense of fraternity with the locals and amongst themselves is challenged. They are very much appreciated by the local Islamic population, especially the medic-priest, but very much in danger. This becomes clear after some Croatian volunteers of the monastery are brutally killed by the guerrilla-fighters. Threatened and unwanted by both guerrilla-forces and the government their presence becomes less and less obvious. At some point after intense confrontations with each other, the terrorists and the locals, they all decide to stay. In the end they are all, safe two who have hidden themselves well, abducted by the terrorists to swap them for their own prisoners in France. As we see them struggling in a snowblizzard in the Atlas mountains, we will not explicitly see what their final fate is ..."

You can read a thoughtful review of the film here:
http://www.speroforum.com/a/33436/Of-Men-and-Gods-a-meditative-film-on-faith-in-the-face-of-violence

Or get the classic Kermode and Mayo 5Live approach on video here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00cnj7w

I'd proposed a short festival of films for National Inter Faith Week 2010 at Phoenix Square but left it too late (and had too much to do for that week in other ways) to make it happen then. It's on my agenda for when it returns later this year though. Such festivals are a regular feature at Phoenix Square, where they've recently had programmes of films on such diverse themes as cycling, LGBT issues, and the spoken word. We're also thinking of approaching them to do something similar for the return of Leicester Speaks (AKA Local Democracy Week). I'm looking forward not just to seeing this movie, but also giving it extensive coverage here on the blog.

There's a mounting sense of anticipation and excitement as we walk toward Phoenix Square; the place is probably busier than I've ever seen it. There are certainly more priests here than I've ever seen turn out for a movie before (including Father John Lally, long standing member of Leicester Council of Faiths). We make our way through the small throng to the box office. I am already relishing this communal experience, looking forward to the collective spellbinding dance of colour and form before our eyes in the darkness of Screen 1. Which of us will request entrance to what is bound to be a united spritiaul experience in this forlorn and forsaken day and age of individuated isolated atomism?

"Two for Of Gods and Men please" I ask. "Sorry sir; sold out."