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Knowledge and Belief in the Community Cinema

Europe: Chris Marker, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Nanni Moretti

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Centochiodi

Chris Marker studied philosophy under Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1983, he achieved fame with his cinematic essay Sans Soleil (Sunless), which combines fictitious elements with discursive philosophical commentary. In Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew), filmed in black and white, Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Italian poet, philosopher and filmmaker, explores the life of Jesus of Nazareth, based on the literal text of the Bible and the Gospel according to St. Matthew. In the film Jesus becomes a realistic human character. In Uccellacci e Uccellini (The Hawks and the Sparrows), also by Pier Paolo Pasolini, a man and his son traveling through the Italian provinces meet a talking crow who engages them in political and philosophical debates. Nanni Moretti inquires into the meaning of life in Caro diario (Dear Diary). In Caos calmo (Quiet Chaos), after the novel of the same name by Sandro Veronesi, Nanni Moretti plays the role of a father who, after the death of his wife, devotes himself to protecting his daughter and watching over her from the parking lot in front of her school. Additional examples from the Italy include: Centochiodi (One Hundred Nails) by master filmmaker Ermanno Olmi, an environmental film about a Christ-like figure in the Po Valley, and L’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio - The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio by Agostino Ferrente, which depicts the faith in creativity of a multicultural orchestra in Rome.

Asia: Christian Values and Buddhist Perspectives

Africa: Tradition and Modernity

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Congo River

In a parable full of dazzling images, the revered master of African cinema Ousmane Sembene tells a story of female circumcision in Moolaadé. Four girls refuse to be circumcised and seek protection from a strong-willed woman who has previously saved her own daughters from the same fate. The film Congo River offers a fascinating cinematic journey inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Latin America: Dreams of a Better Life

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Madeinusa

El Baño del Papa (The Pope's Toilet) from 2007 by Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone tells a true story about dreams that are inspired and encouraged by a world of global media. The papal visit which is the starting point of the action actually took place in the town of Melo in 1988. Madeinusa is the name of a young Quechua girl who lives in a remote village in the wild Andes mountains. The high point of the year is "Holy Week", a bizarre religious Easter festival. In Maria eres llena de Gracia (Maria Full of Grace), Joshua Marston very authentically films the story of the temperamental 17-year-old Maria, who feels stifled in her tiny Colombian village and desperately seeks to escape poverty. She is recruited as a drug courier and flies to New York. Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzman is a poetic parable about astronomy and the last 50 years of Chilean history.

Orient and Occident: Contradiction between Politics and Religion

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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

In his film Lebanon, Samuel Maoz places four young Israeli soldiers in a tank sent to a Lebanese village on the first day of the 1982 war with Lebanon. The focus of (Im Haus meines Vaters sind viele Wohnungen) My Father's House has Many Mansions by Hajo Schomerus (2010) is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem with its six varieties of Christianity all co-existing side by side under one roof. In Salami Aleikum Director Ali Samadi Ahadi surprises with a comical multicultural story about the butcher’s son Mohsen and the vegetarian Ana, who between them manage to embrace almost every conceivable contradiction. Na Putu (On the Path) by Jasmila Zbanic is the story of a relationship between a stewardess and an air traffic controller that falls apart when political and personal situations change. Tangerine plays against the backdrop of the Moroccan port of Tangiers. Director Irene von Alberti tells the story of a difficult friendship between different worlds. In Of Gods and Men, director Xavier Beauvois works from actual facts to describe the final months in the lives of Trappist monks of Tibhirine who were brutally murdered in 1996 under circumstances that have never been explained. A fitting environment for the old Stanley Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which describes the absurd antagonism between East and West during the Cold War.