You might remember last year I posted links to the Easter Journey animations we did at work at SGM Lifewords. A number of people used them in services and Easter events.
Just to follow up on those, the eight films are now available as high resolution downloads, or on DVD. We’ve also created a set of postcards, one for each day, for those who want to use them for daily reflections.
Like all our resources, they’re available on a voluntary donations basis.
Not short films, but I ought to give a shout to two recent work projects.
Metavista – our theologian in residence at SGM Lifewords, Colin Greene, has a book out with Martin Robinson. It’s called Metavista: Bible, Church and Culture in an Age of Imagination, and it’s a very worthwhile read. I’ve been facilitating a blog to accompany the release. As yet there’s no discussion, but there ought to be – head over to meta-vista.org and leave Colin some comments!
Christmas 2008 – every year we release a new set of Christmas resources for churches, and this year’s site is now live and ready to browse. There are downloadable posters and invites, lots of very usable bits and pieces (I suspect that if you’re reading this site you’re probably pretty confident with your own creative projects for church, but you might find something inspiring). One of my favourite aspects is that for the last few years we’ve open-sourced our graphics, which means we get to play a kind of ‘where’s wally’ over christmas as our illustrations crop up in adverts, church websites, incorporated into prayer stations in relatives’ churches…
I’ve mentioned it before, but I finally got round to actually using Annie Leonard’s great little film The Story of Stuff in church last week. I showed the film and then we discussed it.
It raises all kinds of issues, about the environment, the exploitation of developing countries, and where we find our value as human beings. It’s enlightening, it’s funny, and because it deals with the whole process of consumerism from resource extraction to disposal, it’s a good place to start if you don’t know how much people are aware of the issues.
If anyone would like to try this in their own church, community centre, or youth project, the film is available as a free download here.
I used a bunch of stories from the gospels, and passages from the minor prophets, (who might as well have been writing about consumerism) as a basis for discussion. If you’d like those notes, with discussion questions and summary thoughts, they’re all here in Word format: story-of-stuff-notes1
Story of Stuff has recently gone international, with multiple translations available.
FutureShorts have just released their first DVD, which you can buy here, and among the 16 films is this little gem, The Crab Revolution. It’s by Frenchman Arthur De Pins, about the crabs of the Gironde estuary, which I visited on honeymoon in July in fact. The crabs can’t change direction, and when one does… You can watch it for yourself, and see if it reminds you of anything.
I saw this film and I thought immediately of September 11th. It is a striking example of a visual prayer, if you see it that way, of what is broken coming together again. With the anniversary coming up, I thought I’d mention it again.
It is by French design collective Pleix, with audio from Kid 606, and is available on the Onedotzero DVD 4.
Church on the Corner’s ‘Urban Wilderness’ session went pretty well at Greenbelt on saturday night. The potential for it to go horribly wrong kind of grew the nearer it got, but it worked and people got it and we were pleased and relieved. A Christian Aid blogger wrote a nice review of it here, if you want to hear all the details.
Mark has posted the Liturgy of the City here, if you’d like to use that. Our audio soundscape and the monologue ‘Thoughts of an ordinary girl’ will follow shortly.
By the way, we seem to have neglected to take photos of the event. If you were there and were responsible for some of the flashes I definitely saw, could you send something?
If you’re at Greenbelt this year, let me invite you along to ‘Urban wilderness – the spirituality of the city’, hosted by Church on the Corner in the New Forms Cafe on saturday night. Here’s the blurb from the programme:
Christian spirituality has often focussed on escaping the noise and pressure of the city, so how can those who live in its midst find sacred space? An act of worship reflecting on finding Wilderness in the heart of the City.
Having married and moved out of London in the last couple of months I’m not really on the scene at Church on the Corner any more, but they’ve let me come and play anyway, and it’s been really fun helping out planning the session. I won’t spoil the surprise by posting the film and other stuff we’re using ahead of time, but come along, and I’ll tell you afterwards.
Hopeinfo.co.uk has been relaunched with a number of new films. The latest ‘girl musing on train’ Big Hope is quite similar to the ‘man musing on bus’ Fresh Hope, but it does have a vox-pops start that roots it in real life, and it should be widely useful in mainstream churches.
There’s also the iMatter series of ordinary people talking about their own hopes, and I quite like these. I was particularly impressed with Working on Hope, about a guy who works at a dockyard. Perhaps I’m easily and boyishly impressed by big machines moving in the dark, but it really is very well filmed.
There are six films on Hopeinfo at the moment, all downloadable. The four iMatter films are also available on DVD from RUN.
Welcome to short film in worship, slowly cataloguing interesting visuals, music videos and short films that lend themselves to use in church. Search above or browse below to see what we've found so far, and share what you've used or seen.