Religion/Spirituality

"Presented in seven parts, Beauty Plus Pity considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children... (it) contemplates the shame and beauty of existence; it is part apologia, part call to arms."

--Duke & Battersby

The Earth Is Young takes as its starting point a series of interviews conducted with Young Earth Creationists, who find evidence of a six-day, six-thousand-year old creation in their reading of the fossil and geological record. The film frames these encounters with depictions of the slow and patient work of young paleontologists, and the strange, shimmering life in a drop of pond water, both of which point toward a world far older and more complex, if no less fantastic.

A high-pitched melodrama featuring the noise saturated spiritual journey of a vegetarian youth embroiled in big city shenanigans and occult extravaganzas. Along the way we meet a crippled and lovely conservationist, fiery latin lovers, a Loch Ness monster and a wide assortment of characters from the gutter and the galaxy. There is a seance and a seduction at Castle Kebrina along with a glimpse of Armageddon and a repetitive message from the future that booms new age nuances into the snap, crackle and pop stew.

Conversations Across the Bosphorous intertwines the narratives of two Muslim women from Instanbul, Mine and Gokcen, who demonstrate through poetic voices how their relationship to faith has shaped and determined their personal lives. Set on the banks of the Bosphorous, the narrow waterway that divides the the Asian and European continents, Conversations suggests that the relationship of personal faith to cultural and political struggles is one of the most critical issues in both the Islamic and Christian worlds.

Offer a pagan god only simple flowers of spring and the sparkling diamonds and opals of morning dew strung on the threads of the spider... and fear the judgement of holy angels.

An erotic/mystical misadventure in which the allure of the religious path is strewn with earthly temptations. Struggling with a bogus Zen koan involving flowers in keyholes and jumping through windows, the protagonist will end up entering, by the conclusion, the realm of subatomic particles, thereby achieving transcendence-of-a-sort. On the soundtrack, operatic quotations comment ironically (and sometimes sincerely) on the visual proceedings.

Dialogue taken from the Bible is put in the mouths of three souls in a modern apartment, who must deal with a "fall from grace."