Call Me Malcolm is an amazing story of the human spirit and God's spirit, and the liberating struggle to realize and express with confidence the marvelous gift of one's truest sense of self. As Malcolm shares his own story and through the stories of others we meet, Call Me Malcolm offers us a glimpse into the real lives of real people who are transgender. But it is only a glimpse. There are many stories to be told and Malcolm helps us make connections to our own stories, encouraging us to share them. That can seem daunting in a culture which has done more to heap shame on persons who identify as transgender. The good news of Malcolm's story is the way in which shame and fear are overcome by grace, compassion and knowledge. Viewers cannot help but come to a deeper understanding of faith, love, and gender identity, and by doing so, arrive at a deeper understanding of their own journey.
The priest Børre Knudsen is Norway's most infamous anti-abortionist, and much hated for this. He fought for his cause without thinking about the consequences for his family and his children even in the worlds most democratic country.
For two hundred years, the Shakers have been America's most successful utopian society. While seeking harmony, order and perfection in every aspect of their lives, they built minimalistic furniture and buildings that influenced modern design. The Shakers wrote songs of exquisite beauty and danced to the point of ecstasy during their religious meetings. Inspired by this music and dance, choreographer Tero Saarinen created Borrowed Light, a dance piece about communal life and individual sacrifice. Shot in Finland and the United States, featuring interviews and excerpts from Borrowed Light, this documentary explore the cultural legacy of this religious group devoted to creating heaven on earth.
A harrowing exploration of the rapid rise of American religious fanaticism after 9/11. This film explores an emerging ultra Right Wing mass movement seeking dominion over all aspects of contemporary American society. The film weaves archival video, contemporary Christian Nationalist movement propaganda (recruiting videos, apocalyptic/military videogame imagery, etc.) and original investigative material) to create an intense examination of the totalistic mindset and its will to power.
From Belgium, Jialai Wang maintains contact via smartphone and camera with her mother and grandmother in China. When her grandmother’s health deteriorates, Jialai returns to Shanghai, but when she arrives, her grandmother has already died, and she is left alone with her mother. A devout Buddhist, her mother seems to pay more attention to her daily prayers, Maoist past and dog Dongdong than she does to her daughter. She herself had been abandoned as a child by her own mother, when she divorced Jialai’s grandfather and moved to the city.
Filmed during summer 2019, Jesus Is King brings Kanye West’s famed Sunday Service to life in the Roden Crater, visionary artist James Turrell’s never-before-seen installation in Arizona’s Painted Desert. This one-of-a-kind experience features songs arranged by West in the gospel tradition along with new music from his forthcoming album.
Using performance to inspire critical reflection, Promised Paradise delivers fascinating and revealing insight into the social and religious undercurrents dominating Indonesian society today and the Muslim world at large.
An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.
Asilo
Was the Christ Story stolen from other, older religions? Theologian Dr Robert Beckford investigates remarkable parallels between the stories of Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mithra, and other major religious entities, and examines how these similarities impact Christianity and its message.
By comparing the St. Nicholas celebrations in Islamic and Protestant communities in Berlin, the relationship between the religions is explored.
An exploration of the intersection between religion and homosexuality in the U.S. and how the religious right has used its interpretation of the Bible to stigmatize the gay community.
They call it religion. It's been branded a cult. The lethal handling of serpents. In the name of God. Immolation, speaking in tongues, ecstasy, self injury and the dangerous snakes. The bible belt of the very South. Backyard churches. In West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Appalachia.
Found footage: California in the 1950's and 60's. A young Indian couple enjoys their personal American dream come true in their home somewhere in the suburbs of San Francisco. In great detail they pose with their newly achieved wealth in front of their Super-8 camera. Just like postcards, they would send these film rolls to their joint families back in India. Around the same time, an American missionary couple visits the city of Calcutta to shoot a Christian propaganda film. The drastic reality with poverty and famine in the streets of the Indian metropolis fits perfectly into their wicked plan: To promote the faith in Jesus by showing the misery that pagan believers are doomed to suffer from.
How do we live, knowing we are going to die? In search of answers, we probed the minds of atheists, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, physicians, philosophers, authors, academics, a legendary stand-up comic, and scores of random pedestrians.
A man confronts the trauma of past sexual abuse as a boy by a Catholic priest only to find his decision shatters his relationships with his family, community and faith.
American academic Norman Finkelstein discusses foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East.
OUTREMONT AND THE HASIDIM reveals the challenges of accommodating the “Hasidim” – or ultra-Orthodox Jews – in the affluent Montréal borough of Outremont.Some 7,000 Hasidim live in or near this choice neighbourhood of Québec’s Francophone elite. After settling there more than 70 years ago, the Hasidim are a rapidly growing minority group which today represents about 23% of Outremont’s population.Thanks to unprecedented access to this self-isolated community, the film lifts the veil on its practices, traditions, music and life as they had never before been seen on Canadian television, without ignoring the community’s expectations, fears. and hopes.
The film follows Yudale, a religious youth from the settlements, as he experiences a crisis of faith. As he receives a camera from Michal, a Tel Aviv director who teaches him how to film, Yehuda documents his life on the line between the settlement Tko’a and Tel Aviv: his final conversations with his dying father—Rabbi Menachem Fruman– their joint study, and saying goodbye to him. When his father dies, Yehuda chooses to take off his kippah. During the year of mourning, he continues to document his life outside the religious world: exploring Tel Aviv, talking to Michal, and his new perspective on his family and their way of life. Elisheva, a newly observant Jew orphaned from her mother, comes into his life as a soul mate exactly at the moment when he loses hope of finding his way.
The film shows the genesis of the El Rocío pilgrimage and unveils the economic, socio-political and religious reasons and interests that nurture the phenomenon.