Afternoon Seminars & Workshops

 

BC-15  — The Power of Film: Visions of Chaos, Visions of Hope

Andrew Trotter

If our world is one in which Christians often find themselves battling darkness, the American cinema might be a prime candidate for the chief chronicler of that war. Sometimes offering paradigms of hope, sometimes of despair, Hollywood has given us perhaps our best artistic examples of each, especially since the 1960’s. Often, however, Christians lack the skills to understand and engage this medium effectively.

In this seminar we will first outline a few principles to help us understand how to view a movie responsibly. In four sessions, we will lay the groundwork, first for a theology of film watching and also for experiencing entertainment in general. We will then look at some of the elements of filmmaking to develop categories for understanding the content of a movie from the filmmaker’s standpoint. In this examination, we will discuss scenes from four important films: Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner and The King’s Speech.

 

Andrew Trotter — Speaker, lecturer, and writer on film and popular culture. Drew Trotter was for twenty-two years the Executive Director and President of the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, VA. He has written on film and popular culture in numerous leading publications, and has also published Interpreting the Epistle to the Hebrews (Baker, 1997).  Dr. Trotter lectures and preaches at seminaries, churches, and colleges throughout the United States and Canada on a wide variety of topics, including his most-in-demand seminar Show and Tell: How to View a Movie Responsibly, helping laypeople and students understand this powerful medium and how to think about its influence on both the individual and society.