‘Sugarcane’ is a compelling 2024 documentary that delves into the harrowing legacy of the Canadian Indian residential school system. The film investigates the discovery of unmarked graves at St. Joseph's Mission near Williams Lake, British Columbia, bringing to light the physical and sexual abuses endured by Indigenous children. Through intim ...ate interviews with survivors and their descendants, directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie reveal the enduring impact of these institutions on Indigenous communities, highlighting their resilience and ongoing quest for justice. The narrative intertwines personal stories with a broader historical context, showcasing the strength and unity of a community confronting its painful past. ‘Sugarcane’ not only exposes the atrocities committed but also celebrates the enduring spirit of Indigenous peoples as they heal and reclaim their cultural identity. This poignant film serves as a testament to their perseverance and the ongoing fight for recognition and reconciliation.
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Six midwestern men all survivors of childhood sexual assault at the hands of Catholic priests and clergy come together to direct a drama therapy-inspired experiment designed to collectively work through their trauma. As part of a radically collaborative filmmaking process, they create fictional scenes based on memories, dreams and experiences ..., meant to explore the church rituals, culture and hierarchies that enabled silence around their abuse. In the face of a failed legal system, we watch these men reclaim the spaces that allowed their assault, revealing the possibility for catharsis and redemption through a new-found fraternity.
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Salvador Dali's strange crucifixion is often called the greatest religious painting of the 20th century. Yet its artist was a notorious blasphemer some of whose work had outraged the Catholic Church. The Christ of St John of the Cross by Salvador Dali is the first of two extraordinary crucifixions painted by Dali in the early 1950s. The paint ...ing is based on a 'cosmic dream' Dali is said to have had, in which the nucleus of the atom was a figure of Christ himself. The painting offers a surrealist view of the crucifixion of Christ, and is based on a drawing by the 16th century Spanish friar Saint John of the Cross. But Dali's vision was somewhat unique, using an unusual artistic perspective in which Christ is seen from above. His Christ of St. John of The Cross was inspired by a weird mix of Spanish mysticism and nuclear physics, with his Christ being modelled by a Hollywood stuntman. It's also a masterpiece of painting technique.
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In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinct ...ion under Soviet communism. MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.
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Over one billion Christians look to Rome, more than half of all Christians on the planet. But how did a small Jewish sect from the backwoods of 1st-century Palestine, which preached humility and the virtue of poverty, become the established religion of western Europe - wealthy, powerful and expecting unfailing obedience from the faithful? Amo ...ngst the surprising revelations, Professor MacCulloch tells how confession was invented by monks on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, and how the Crusades gave Britain the university system. Above all, it is a story of what can be achieved when you have friends in high places.
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There are some who believe that Darwin's theory of evolution has weakened religion. Conor Cunningham argues that nothing could be further from the truth.He travels to the Middle East where he shows that from the very outset, Christianity warned against literal readings of the biblical story of creation. In Britain, he reveals that, at the tim ...e, Darwin's theory of evolution was welcomed by the Anglican and Catholic Churches. Instead, he argues that the conflict between Darwin and God was manufactured by American creationists in the 20th century for reasons that had very little to do with science and religion and a great deal to do with politics and morality. Finally, he comes face to face with some of the most eminent evolutionary biologists, geneticists and philosophers of our time to examine whether the very
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The narrative intertwines personal stories with a broader historical context, showcasing the strength and unity of a community confronting its painful past. ‘Sugarcane’ not only exposes the atrocities committed but also celebrates the enduring spirit of Indigenous peoples as they heal and reclaim their cultural identity. This poignant film serves as a testament to their perseverance and the ongoing fight for recognition and reconciliation. Show More