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Being Thunder (2021)
Touching Heartfelt
I found this piece moving and true. It lended a glimpse on a world that I am unfamiliar - and also an experience in which I too share similarities. I enjoyed how the filmmakers allowed the subjects to speak for themselves - and to frame how they make sense of these experiences in their own world. LGBTQ people exist in every culture and place and era of history. It is beautiful and enriching to hear and see how other cultures make sense of the reality of queer existence and experience. I'm proud to share the same air as these people and humbled to learn a little bit about their worlds. Art like this makes us all better.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
A Masterpiece
I'm so grateful I took the time to absorb this beautiful and evocative film.
I laughed and cried.
I left inspired and confused and entertained.
Thank you to the people who made it.
It touches our humanity in a deeply true way.
Joven y alocada (2012)
Look Closer
Young and wild is a film about adolescence, self-imposed boundaries, religion, and spirituality. Perhaps the unique hitch is that, rather than being told by a mature and seasoned (read curmudgeonly) adult, it is told unflinchingly through the eyes of its protagonist, a seventeen- year-old Chilean girl named Daniela. A local legend, even in real life, Daniela maintains a detailed blog of her sexual exploits and deepest thoughts. Through a creative use of Chilean pop-music, graphics, and editing, the audience is let into this world. The content of the film is shocking, explicit, and (at moments) even pornographic. Thus with a surface level look, it would be easy to condemn it on this basis, However, writing it off wholesale would risk losing the truth depicted in Daniela's personal spiritual struggle. Here we experience, as much as we can, what it feels like to be a teenager under the iron thumb of mature Christian shame (not Daniela's, but her mother's). While it is true that director Marialy Rivas goes over the top to be outrageous (I could not help but avert my eyes at certain moments), it is also true that if it wasn't explicit in some ways, it couldn't claim to tell Daniela's actual story from her perspective. Aside from my shock at the graphic sexuality, my primary emotional response to the film was sadness. As a human being, I too have lived in the tension of knowingly, willingly, happily stepping into wrong/unhelpful behavior (we call it 'sin' in the Christian world-view) and yet believed in and tried to follow a God who is not OK with that. I too have lived in the tension of being in a community in which I assumed that I was the only one to have shameful secrets. It is a lonely place to exist; and I don't think it has to be that way. Thus my sadness is twofold: for Daniela's despair and isolation (she eventually fully embraces her wild side admitting "I am Lost, I am Lost, I am Lost"), and for the ineptitude of the church to teach an open and humble path of living for real people who make mistakes that run the gamut of human experience. As a Christian pastor, it is on me to demonstrate authenticity and the kind of truth that Young and Wild explores.