Thursday, October 26, 2006

Heads Up for Midnight Clear

Here is a preview of a film by one of our bright young talented directors in Hollywood who happens to be Christian. Dallas Jenkins is a thoughtful committed Christianand director who is one of the guys I am expecting to lay down the foundation of the renaissance in cinema made from a Christian world-view.

There are a lot of Christians out here who have elected to disengage from the problem of being intentional as a Christian making films. Exhausted or intellectually and academically ill-equipped to figure out a philosophical underpinning for their work, we hear Hollywood Christians living the unexamined life in Hollywood say things like, "Hey, I am a Christian. Anything I make will refelct that."

No. Way too easy. A renaissance in Christian filmmaking is not going to happen by accident. It's too hard. It certainly isn't going to spring from the creative loins of believing filmmakers who routinely subvert their intended good messages by co-opting cinematic and storytelling conventions that are problematic or even perverse.

Anyway, Dallas isn't living the unexamined life here. He is an artist and a believer who works with pagans and believers with that missionary mindset that we Act Oners are always harping on. No Christian ghetto-dweller here.

My sense is that Dallas' films won't be the stuff that will be intelligible or desirable to FOX Faith and Sony Inspirational and Lionsgate "Whatever they are calling their holy stuff division" and Newline "Whatever they are calling their holy stuff division". At least not this week. I think Dallas' style of films is more what the future for Christians in Hollywood will look like. More difficult. More ambiguous. More stylistic. Definitely less Pollyanna and more Flannery O'Connor.

So, check out the preview to his current project "Midnight Clear" and be hipper than all your Christian cinema geek friends!

Click here

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