Towards an Authentic Faith-based Cinema

Write Spirit Presents

Towards an Authentic Faith-based Cinema:
How Believers Should Understand and Make Art, Stories, and Movies

Seven 90-minute Live Zoom Sessions

Tuesdays, 6:00-7:30pm EST
January 23 - March 5, 2024

$125 for CAI Members
$150 for non-members

Instructor: Barbara Nicolosi, PhD

Member, Writers Guild of America-West /Screenwriter, Fatima (2020) / Author, Notes to Screenwriters

This seven-week course will put together a cogent and desperately needed faith-based film theory. Not just for screenwriters and producers, this course is geared to anyone who cares about the connection between culture and the life of faith. Why do art and story and movies matter on a spiritual level, and how should the Church nurture and support artists? This course seeks to transform the average movie fan into a thoughtful receiver of the tremendous good to be found in the medium that is a key art form of our time.

(Sessions will be recorded and can be watched by attendees at their leisure.)

Week I – Missing Moments, Respecting Persons, and the Desire to Please: What’s Wrong with So Many Faith-Based Media Projects?

Week II - The Demands of Beauty: A Christian Understanding of Art and Artists

Week III – Movement, Close ups, and Layering: What Makes a Movie a Movie, and Why Should Christians Care?

Week IV – Subtext as Key: Theme and Imagery in Christian Storytelling

Week V - Flannery O’Connor on Story, I: Truth, Consequences and Catharsis

Week VI – Flannery O’Connor on Story. II: Writing from “Our Country”

Week VII – The Theology of the Body for the Movies

Suggested Texts for the Course:

1). Beauty: What It Is & Why It Matters, Miravalle, Mark, Sophia Institute Press, Manchester NH, 2019, 978-1—622827-121

2). Mystery and Manners, O’Connor, Flannery, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (January 1, 1970), Paperback : 256 pages, ISBN-10 : 0374508046.

3). Do Story, Buster, Bobette, 2013, The Do Book Company, Wales, UK, 978-1-907974-05-2

Enrollment fees:   CAI members:  $125 program fee per student. Non-members $150 

No Refunds after Jan 19, 2024

If you'd like to become a member and receive discounts on this and future events, as well as being enrolled in the Mass Association please visit: https://www.catholicartinstitute.org/membership

Program participants are encouraged to attend the live Zoom sessions, however, all presentations will be recorded and the Zoom link sent to participants to watch at their leisure.

For more information email: infowritespirit@gmail.com