Christian Film Week” “” “

One of the objectives of Christian Film Week, held in the French capital from 17 to 23 October on the initiative of the diocese of Paris, is that of bringing Christians ever closer to the seventh art. On the theme of fear, chosen for this year’s film week, 26 masterpieces were selected from the world repertoire, including such universally famous titles as: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Howard Hawks (1953), La Peau Douce, by François Truffaut (1964), 2001, Odyssey in Space, by Stanley Kubrick (1968) or, more recently, Space Cowboys by Clint Eastwood (2000), together with other films by Buster Keaton, Claude Chabrol, Ingmar Bergman, Roberto Rossellini and Woody Allen. Is it necessary to reconcile Christians with the cinema? “After the abandonment of parish cinemas and film clubs, Christians have distanced themselves from the cinema”, complains Bertilie Walckenaer, organizer of the event. Today Christians have the duty to cultivate this form of openness to the world, “to look at the world through artists’ eyes”. The culture of the image in fact represents an indispensable dimension of our age. Although of such tragic actuality today, the theme of fear was in fact chosen way back in December 2000. “Fear is insidious: it infiltrates itself into our every heartbeat, into each of the seconds in which eternity is measured”, says Msgr. Jean-Michel Di Falco, auxiliary bishop of Paris and member of the Standing Committee for Information and Communication. “Fear is at our side; let us identify it, recognize it, so that it itself may prompt us to overcome it, to reach beyond, to reach higher, and not remain stupefied and fall into inanition”, concludes the bishop. Films of Hollywood type generally stop at the moment in which the worst is already over, emphasizes Bertilie Walckenaer, “in other words, on the threshold of the mystery”. In the view of Di Falco, who inaugurated the event on the evening of 17 October, the fundamental question, i.e. how to live beyond fear, can be overcome: “An authentically human view of fear must be able to come to terms with it, with realism: fear of the other, fear of the void, fear of commitment, fear of the future, fear of death”. For seven years now, the Christian Film Week has won over numerous film buffs, both among adults and among the young. In 1999-2000, the programme “Young Christians at the cinema” enabled over four thousand students, both from public and private institutes, to discover on the big screen a vision of the world expressed by the masters of the cinema, with an introduction before every projection given in turn by a member of the selection committee and a debate after the screening. Created in 1995 on the occasion of the centenary of the cinema, the Christian Film Week attracts each year several thousand spectators to a small cinema at the heart of Paris. The selection committee, composed of film professionals, theologians and educators, has always built its programmes round a specific theme: in 1996, “evil and grace”; in 1997, “illegality”; in 1998, “images of the father; in 1999, “truth and lies”; and in 2000, “rebirth”. Maryvonne Gasse – Paris