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Reflections for a Laudato Si’ Film Festival

Reflections for a Laudato Si’ Film Festival

Last updated on: December 29, 2015 at 5:07 pm by Sister Rose

Reflections for a Laudato Si’ Film Festival 2015-12-29T17:07:09-07:00 Sister Rose

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“Have you ever wondered what would happen, if all the geniuses, the artists, the scientists, the smartest, most creative people in the world decided to actually change it?”
—”Tomorrowland”

In last summer’s dystopian blockbuster “Mad Max: Fury Road” the character Nux exclaims, “We are not to blame!” to which The Splendid Angharad replies, “Then who killed the world?”

Pope Francis’ prophetic encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home” is dated May 24, 2015, Pentecost Sunday, a week after George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” was released. They share common themes and both are calls to conversion. The film is certainly bleak, but a call to change nonetheless.

The pope, serious yet hopeful, clearly expresses the sources that cause the environmental destruction of the Earth, our common home: a throwaway culture, consumerism, the thirst for short-term profit over long-term benefit, consequences of climate change, lack of concern for human life and the poor, and the unbridled quest for power.

The themes of “Mad Max” are a dreary turn on these ideas as imagined by the filmmaker: war, violence, community, relationships, dire consequences of unregulated growth and hyper dependence on technology, the lack of water, thin crops and food shortages, pollution, human trafficking, conversion, and, above all, the thirst for power and dominion over the Earth and people.

But “Mad Max: Fury Road” is not the only film that deals with these issues. There are so many. Going back as far as Fritz Lang’s 1927 no-words-needed silent film “Metropolis” about an artificial technological utopia built upon and feeding off oppressed workers, the films keep coming.

Some say that the films about the environment really started in 1973 with “Soylent Green” about the greenhouse effect, followed by “Chinatown” in 1974 about the manipulation of water for profit.

It occurred to me that the encyclical could be a very fine guide indeed to a family film festival or school, parish or group, but you need a license to show the films outside of the school day. (See Church Video License.)

In Paragraph 79 of Laudato Si’, Francis opens the door to using film to understand the crisis as well as to engage our moral imaginations to come up with solutions:

Faith allows us to interpret the meaning and the mysterious beauty of what is unfolding. We are free to apply our intelligence towards things evolving positively, or towards adding new ills, new causes of suffering and real setbacks. This is what makes for the excitement and drama of human history, in which freedom, growth, salvation and love can blossom, or lead towards decadence and mutual destruction. The work of the Church seeks not only to remind everyone of the duty to care for nature, but at the same time “she must above all protect mankind from self-destruction.”
In Chapter Two, Part VII, the pope writes about the “gaze of Jesus,” where he looks in his world, what he points to, and speaks about. Cinema tells stories that direct our gaze as well, and sometimes they converge with faith in startling, prophetic ways.

In 12 different places, the pope speaks of “vision,” the need for seeing what is wrong and what is good. Film can offer us these broad visions that are often sacramental: visible signs of invisible realities, the bad and the good — and possibilities for change.

Laudato Si’ is divided into six chapters, with an introduction and a conclusion consisting in two prayers: “A prayer for our earth” and “A Christian prayer in union with creation.” These prayers are ideal ways to begin and close a film festival. The first invites us to see God present in the entire universe and the second is a hymn of praise asking God to let us be channels of peace in the world.

The pope quotes Scripture passages frequently; you can read these before or after the film as a way to do a kind of lectio (or cinema) divina. There will be at least one film for the entire family in each section as a way to introduce children and teens into a catechesis of ecology. Several films can be used in more than one section.

Here is a list of films that form a space to talk about care for the Earth, according to framework of Laudato Si’. I have listed only some of the many themes from each chapter along with films that express and explore the same ideas.

Introduction

Themes: the Earth, our common home; global environmental deterioration; exploitation of nature; ecological catastrophe; need for conversion; authentic human ecology; structural causes of environmental harm; misuse of creation; individualism; stripping the Earth of wetlands and forests; integral ecology lived joyfully; nature; justice for the poor; openness to awe and wonder; beauty and goodness as expressed in Scripture; the Earth as a joyful mystery; sustainable and integral development; denial of problems; human suffering; the fragility of the planet; Catholic social teaching.

Films: Dolphin Tale; Dolphin Tale 2; Arctic Tale; Baraka; Whale Rider; Dirty Pretty Things; Darfur Now; An Inconvenient Truth.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of the themes and films for a “Laudato Si'” Film Festival!

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