Since we are isolated and stuck inside during this Christmas season, I decided this year I was going to put together a list of of my favorite Christmas stories. The angle I took in putting this together is Christmas “pairings”, be it in book form or film. These are stories that seem to me to have a connection in spirit and focus, and which have inspired me over the years.

I have come up with 15 pairings of films/books in total, and my plan is to present those films one a day along with a brief reflection on why these stories resonated for me, how I see them fitting together, and what I think they can say to us in a more difficult Christmas season.
Here is my third pairing 🙂

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI (1905, by O. Henry) AND THE NATIVITY STORY (2006)

“Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”

Known for his short stories that span the geographrical settings of his troubled and problematic personal life, Henry (real name, William Porter) was most interested in finding life and beauty in the ordinary and the everyday routine, especially within the extraordinary and larger than life backdrop of New York City. He is known for taking these stories and giving them suprise endings, twists that help subvert our understanding of the ordinary.

One of his most famous is The Gift of the Magi, a powerful Christmas story about an impoverished couple looking for a way to gain enough money just to purchase a gift and make Christmas something special. In his familiar way, Henry provides this story with a twist that not only subverts our understanding of what makes Christmas matter, but challenge our idea of servanthood and sacrifice, especially when set against hard economic realities. The way the story uses the Magi symbolically in order to locate the story of this everyday couple within a profoundly spiritual message about the extraordinary power of servanthood and sacrifice is quite profound.

In The Nativity Story, a cinematic retelling of the Biblical Christmas story, the presence of the Magi allow us to center this human story in the extraordinary image of Christ’s birth. It’s an intimately drawn and utterly honest period piece by Director Chatherine Hardwicke that desires to immerse us in the journey of an impoverished couple’s journey to Bethlehem against an equally challenging economic backdrop. She demonstrates the climatic moment in the story with a sense of humility that invites us to find the extraordinary in the story of two very ordinary persons, and she does so with an eye on drawing out the simplicity of the textual source.

Her incredibly researched and visually stunning work attempts to take an ancient story and tell it in a familiar way. What might be most affecting though is the way she is able to demonstrate Christ’s arrival as a kind of surprise ending, a twist in the narrative. In the story of Christ’s arrival we find the subverting of expectations. In the birth of Christ we find the very image of servanthood and sacrifice that is able to uncover the beauty of this seemingly ordarinary world, the same beauty Henry was able to see in the world around him despite his own troubled life.

It’s a reminder that the extraordinary is often found in the most ordinary of places, and that it is precisely where we don’t expect there to be beauty and wonder that the light can shine the brightest.

Since we are isolated and stuck inside during this Christmas season, I decided this year I was going to put together a list of of my favorite Christmas stories. The angle I took in putting this together is Christmas “pairings”, be it in book form or film. These are stories that seem to me to have a connection in spirit and focus, and which have inspired me over the years.

I have come up with 15 pairings of films/books in total, and my plan is to present those films one a day along with a brief reflection on why these stories resonated for me, how I see them fitting together, and what I think they can say to us in a more difficult Christmas season.
Here is my second pairing 🙂

THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS (2017) and MR. DICKENS AND HIS CAROL BY SAMANTHA SILVA (2017)

There is a certain irony to the fact that 2017 saw the release of Silva’s Novel, Mr. Dickens and His Carol, a fictional take on a historical figure that narrows in on the years leading up to Dicken’s eventual release of his famous A Christmas Carol. As the story goes, silva original wrote Mr. Dicken’s as a script, and after failing to get any leads eventually decided to turn it into a novel.

At the same time, studios had decided to adapt Les Standifords historical work on Dicken’s into a film, coincidentally slating it for release alongside Silva’s imagined take. Call it a bitter irony in Silva’s case

The world is of course richer having both of these stories to help us adorn the spirit of the season. Where Director Bharat Nalluri takes us inside the life of an iconic figure, Silva’s more imaginative and inventive take on his story immerses us in Dickens as an idea. She stokes the fires of London’s romanticism and the season’s promise while posing questions about the ways in which this romanticism must also make sense of the darkness and the struggle. If Nalluri’s vision, along with the book that inspired it, takes us through the pages of the historical narrative, Silva takes that story and turns it into poetry.

A few years ago, Jen (my wife) and I had a chance to return to New York for a few days during the Christmas season. This time around we took the opportunity to drive towards the Catskills in Northern New York, following the never ending stretch of Broadway that gradually leaves the majestic view of Manhattans skyline in your rear view. Ahead of you lies the promise of escape and renewal.

Along this drive, two of the towns that you pass through are named Irvington and Sleepy Hollow, which are of course named for the iconic author who wrote in relationship with Dickens and is often credited as being the true inventer of the Christmas we know and recognize today. His idealizing of the traditional “English” Christmas that Dicken’s helped bring to life was the tonic that an impoverished America seemed to desire at a time when Christmas as an idea was all but dead. An old relic of a divisive time in societies history when Christmas used to signify the worst parts of humanity. What Irvington helped to do was reshape the season as one of hope.

If there is one thing that this film and book inspire, it would be this idea of hope. As Silva imagines the voice of Dickens, we hear him cry out amidst the imagining of these ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, “I am not haunted by ghosts, but by the monsters of ignorance, poverty, want! Not useless phantoms that frighten people into inactivity. I do not abide such nonsense.” The story of his most famous book’s creation, which parallels Dicken’s own life and experience, is one that includes much sadness and regret. It would be impossible to encounter A Christmas Carol or any of its subsequent adaptations and reimaginings and miss this fact.

And yet what lies at the heart of Dicken’s story is also a message of hope. As Silva suggests at the beginning of her book, “A good biography tells us the truth about a person; a good story, the truth about ourselves.” And so much of her imagined story mirrors the real life truths that we see in The Man Who Invented Christmas. For Silva, much of this hope comes from the ways in which Dicken’s own life eventually revolved around the reality of his children. “Children were an act of optimism- sheer belief that the future will outshine the present.” But Christmas is actually about more than this. It is about rediscovering the child in all of us, no matter our age. It is about reinvigorating the imagination. For Dicken’s this came through story, the same kind of storytelling that inspired America (and Canada for that matter) to literally reinvent itself through the pages of Irvington’s hope filled imagination. As one could say about Dickens, “Every book you’ve ever written is a book about Christmas. About the feeling we must have for one another, without which we are lost.” For Dickens, stories were powerful. For me, Dicken’s story, be it as history or poetry, is equally powerful.

“Words were inadequate, but all he had. He didn’t know where they came from or why, but it was how we told one another what the world was and might be. Who we were, and might become. It was the only magic he had. Everything else was faith. He felt blessed and grateful.”

Since we are isolated and stuck inside during this Christmas season, I decided this year I was going to put together a list of of my favorite Christmas stories. The angle I took in putting this together is Christmas “pairings”, be it in book form or film. These are stories that seem to me to have a connection in spirit and focus, and which have inspired me over the years.

I have come up with 15 pairings of films/books in total, and my plan is to present those films one a day, beginning today with the second Sunday of Advent, along with a brief reflection on why these stories resonated for me, how I see them fitting together, and what I think they can say to us in a more difficult Christmas season.

Here is my first pairing 🙂

TOKYO GODFATHERS (2003) and LAST CHRISTMAS (2019)

At the heart of both of these stories are dysfunctional families. In the case of Tokyo Godfathers, this is a non-biological family born from a shared experience of homelessness and poverty. In the case of Last Christmas, it is a blood related immigrant family finding their way in America.

What’s interesting about considering these two films in conversataion is that both films are about the power a single person and experience holds to change our perspective in the midst of the current struggle, but they approach this from opposite ends of the conversation. In Tokyo Godfather we begin from a position of impoverished struggle where a chance encounter with an abandoned baby refocuses their attention away from their own circumstance and onto the fate of this young life. In Last Christmas, we begin from a place of privilege where a chance encounter with a young man refocuses a young woman’s perspective away from her own circumstnace, which is humurously dysfunctional even without the family in view, and onto the very real struggles of poverty, racism (including immigration) and a divided and estranged family.

There is a thread of faith that works its way through both films as well. In Tokyo Godfathers, the baby acts as a mirror image to their own experience, evoking questions of why God would allow the abandonment of a baby, and by nature their poverty. What is interesting is that the child becomes the means by which the homeless family is able to put their own struggle into some form of context. They matter becuase this child matters. In Last Christmas, our main character’s gradual spiritual awakening moves her from the apathy of her not so great life choices, which includes a barrage of surface relationships that don’t really hold much meaning, towards valuing the stuff that really matters. Her story matters because the story of her family and her people and those in poverty matter.

The powerful truth in both of these films is that everyone has a story. The binding agent that brings these stories together is compassion and empathy. This is what locates agency in a place where agency doesn’t seem to exist. And in both films we discover a profound picture of grace, grace that moves us to consider that despite the challenges that weight down our personal circumstance, be it in places of privilege or poverty, there is a great big world that invites our participation. Sometimes we simply need to look up from where we are to see it.

I’ve been working through a Torah course on the book of Judges as a follow up to the recent time I spent in the books of Numbers and Joshua. And while I have only recently started my journey through this tumoltuous time in Israel’s history, some of the context for the book that I have been uncovering has started an intriguing line of thought that I felt was worth pausing to briefly reflect on.

To Name A Judge

The English title for the book’s title comes from a word that translates similarly in the Greek, the Latin and even later English (to make it revelant to my personal, modern context). As with many words that translate from the original Hebrew, the word itself faced (and does face) some specific problems when it comes to capturing the essence of it’s original meaning. This might be most readily evident when we see the word in modern judicial terms, as is the tendeny in the English speaking West. The root of the term “judges” comes from the Hebrew word that evokes something broader than simply a judge offering up a verdict on someone who is either evil or who committed an evil act (and the flipside the declaration of innocence). At its core, in Hebrew the term “judges” conjures up allusions to one who both saves and one who reforms. It is a relational term that evokes images of a savior rather than demonstrating a legal or legislative postion, and images of purifying or reforming rather than a condemning sentence.

The root of the word flows from Moses story in Deuteronomy (chapters 16-18), where we see “judges” defined as appointed figures alongside the Priests (Deut. 16:19-20; 17:8-13), a concept which has to do or is concerened with living as the people of God and in relationship to God and one another. At this point in Israel’s story we see the establishment of this new community, a people called to demonstrate God’s vision for the world, taking shape.

What is important to remember about the term “judges” is that this same appointed position flows outwards into the concepts of Priest, Prophets and the Kings. All of these are terms that relate to a kind of appointed position or governance, and the best way to understnad Israel at the time that these terms emerge is as a decentralized group of disparate people coming together from different cultures and different walks of life to co-exist with a shared experience of oppression. During their time in Egypt, and subsequently throughout the experiences that follow the Exodus story, this would have been a growing mix of all kind of people who simpy shared in their experience of being under the Egyptian power (according to the Hebrew Tradition). Similar to the surrounding nations, and further on in Greek society, one could then describe Israel as a loose confederation of disparate states held together by single collective force. In the ancient world this was most often religion, which itself was bound together through a nations or a people’s origins story. These origins stories were both how a nation distinguished itself from another and how they co-existed as a diverse people with a unified vision.

What is interesting then is to track what happens to these different “nations” or people groups as one or another of them begin to develop into empires. In most cases what woud would happen is the empire would recognize that the best way for these conquered nations to live together under the rule of a single entity was to be afforded some degree of freedom to coexist within their belief systems, so long as allegiance was payed to the ruling empire and religious system through trade and money. In other words, in a world where mutliple origin stories had to be synchornized in order to function productively in service to a powerful empire’s rule, religion was often traded for some version of forced economic and trade relations. Which is not to say that religion was done away with, but simply that they allowed religious observance through (expected and forced) economic participation. This is what it meant later on in Jesus’ day to say that Caesar is Lord under Rome. This is the very nature of assimilation.

And when a nation is forced to assimilate, what often happened is that people would begin to forget about their origins story and find greater comfort and safety through marrying their own tradition to the customs of the land they now reside in. This was the state of Israel at the time of the Judges. The time of the Judges (traditionally there are 12 of them) reflected the official shift from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, which coincided with the development of the “sea people” (the Philistines) and, theologically speaking, provides the bridge between the end of Joshua’s story and the beginning of the era of the Kings. In tension was their memory of their origins story, which at this time was the story of the Exodus which culminated with Moses on the mountain, which later melds with the Genesis narrative of creation and Abraham,

In both Moses’ narrative and Joshua’s narrative we essentially end with a call to Covenant renewal. The reeestablishing of their collective religious memory as a unifying force. Between Joshua’s death and the period of Judges we see an immediate decline in the state of the people. We encounter an almost anarchist tone of a people too numerous to count in the book of Numbers, albeit a tempered one, where this eclectic and diverse group of people living in the land together have quickly forgotten the Exodus story (in the same way they did in the book of Numbers… AND THEY JUST LEFT EGYPT!!). They lived essentially without a ruler, rather appointed persons and offices, that is until they started to see the powerful nations around them (in the book of Judges we see the Philistines), nations who had rulers.

Prophet, Priest, Judge and King

To repeat again, the notion of a “judge” belongs in the same designation as prophet, priest, and king. And all of these titles, although expressed and defined differentlly throughout the different situations that these appointed figures encounter, have two essential descriptives in common-

1. They are appointed by God

2. They are intended to deliver or to save

As well, they are best understood in terms of a method of governance. A way of unifying a diverse group of people within a single vision of where they came from and where they are headed. Of concern in the midst of this, and what the Israelite story could speak speak to, is this figuring out of the relationship between their cirucmstnace and their own actions. They are freed from Egypt, and yet freedom often leads back into further slavery to surrounding nations as we follow the Israelite story. We see this in the desert, in the occupying of the promised land, in the exile and demolishing of the temple. Thus what came to be undertood is that if a promise of freedom is defined as a covenant, either God has broken His side of the promise or they broke theirs. In an effort to locate the reason for their continued oppression, their point of perspective continues to flow back and forth between these two realities, with appointed positions raised up to remind them of God’s faithfulness and their sinfulness as the root of the issue. If they find themselves in positions of suffering and far from the freedom they hope for, it is not because God has abandoned them, but rather because they have chosesn something different than God’s vision for their people. As a temple text established to hold this in plain view, this then forms the crux of the Genesis narrative, a narrative that imagines the same dueling force of blessings and curses that flows from the mountain on which Moses first establishes this marriage between Yahweh and Israel as a functioning and brithing community.

In the scope of the larger Christian narrative, where we see this story finding its climax is in the person of Jesus. As Jesus arrives on the scene, he arrives in line with these designations of rule or governance that have run through Israel’s history. He embodies the completeness of these designations, designations that are constructed according to the rule of the surrounding nations, such as the call for a King if simply because the powerful nations that surround them have a Kingd. These appointed positions can be seen as broken signposts, to borrow the language of N.T. Wright, of something greater, flawed characters calling a flawed people to unity in the midst of division as they await the promise of the fulfilled covenant. Jesus embodies the people’s collective memory and becomes that unifying force. All things now come together in Jesus who is seen as the restored Temple, the New Adam, the full Israel, the indwelling or tabernacling of the presence of God in the lives of a people who are declared loved by God.

It is in Jesus then that this particular label of “judge” finds its clearest expression as an intimately formed Jewish idea. As the story of Israel has been unfolding, the trajectory begins with one man (Adam, the image of God), moves outward from the garden (which represented God’s unified vision for the cosmos, for the world, the divine throne room where he occupies the heavens with the earth as his footstool) to the story of Noah (which in this progression provides the central antithesis to this unified vision now reconfigured through the violence of Cain and Abel that breaks it apart). Here we see a society built on the shedding of blood being held in contrast with the unity of the garden, with the flood story functioning as a de-creation narrative in patterned allignement with the Genesis origins story of the waters held above now being let go. This returns us to the garden through this vision of these symbolic “pairs”, which gives us a picture of this return to vision of unity within our diversity that through the covenant with Noah moves forward through one man (Abraham) with a renewed vision for how this unity can and will work- one man for the nations (the world). This is what Abrahams name literally means. Thus we find the unfolding narrative that becomes the essence of the Christological or messianic expectation. This one man (Abraham) becomes embodied in a single nation raised up for the sake of th world, through which we then begin to narrow in scope again to a family (Davidic line) followed by an even further narrowing to a single seed. Out of which we move into the period of exile and towards the fulfillment of the promise in one man, the New Adam (Jesus).

A couple important points here. Through this lens we can locate both the coming exile and the broken signpost of these failed titles of prophet, judge, priest and king to bring Israel to covenant fulfillment, as a de-creation process. A saving work. A purifying work. Similarly, we can see the state of Israel in the story of the “judges” in this way as well. Secondly, what we can recognize is the intention in seeing in the final judge (Samson, as is the case with King David and Moses and Joseph leading up to the Exodus) a Christ type. Consider that he is a Nazirite born with a declarative promise given from an exceptional birth, and that he is seen to be set apart for the sake of his people and sacrifices himself for his people in a kind of cleansing or destroying act with the purpose of fulfilling a decreation-recreation process.

The Uniquely Unifying Vision of the Israelite Promise

With this in mind, what is important to keep in mind when reading the Book of Judges is how this trajectory, this messianic focus and typology, and in Christendom this understanding of the fulfillment of these governing titles in Jesus, there is a single idea that seemed to set Israel apart from the surrounding nations. And it has to do with how we move from a unified people under God (or in the broader sense, religion) to a people for the world without getting caught in the trappings of empire. If the Christian narrative can be summed up as a singular contest, it would be as a contest of empires. There seems to be this ongoing tension presented throughout the Judeo-Christian story that suggests there are two ways of building society, beginning with the Garden as a constrating picture of a “building” society (one birthed in the tree of life, the other birthed in the blood soaked story of Cain and Abel), and then carrying through the story of a people set apart for a different vision of empire, perhaps most recognizably patterned against the story of Babel (a people unified under conquest and conformity and assimilation that becomes the literal and metaphorical template for “Babylon” that runs through Genesis to Revelation… the contrasting picture of empire). The problem that we find over and over again is that as nations develop into empires, a people (Israel) set apart to represent a contrasting vision of empire find themselves under conquest and thus desiring and conforming to the wrong idea of empire. Thus, as the messianic promise unfolds the office of prophet, priest, kind and judge continues to call them away from these visions of conquest and economic control and back to remembrance of their origins story. This most often happens through an ongoing cycle of deconstruction and reconsruction narratives, and perhaps more readily happens through thet flawed systems that see Israel mired in these undesirable cycles of violence and conquest as well. This is where Jesus becomes the fulfillment and fullest expressions of these office’s true concern- liberation and reform for the sake of a new creation. In Jesus we can see how Yahweh’s desire for Israel was something other than these destructive cycles which are not brought on by God’s doing, but rather by Israel’s forgetting of their true identity- where they came from and where they are headed as a people for the world.

What we actually find then is a nation, a people unified by their origins story for the purpose of then being pushed back out into the diversity of the world with a single vision of God’s love. By enveloping the diversity of the world into this unifying force that declares the power to uphold it, they can then bear witness to the new creation reality, a Kingdom being built according to a different way than economic purposes. In the story of the Judges this is demonstrated through being reminded of their covenant with Yahweh. In the Christian story this covenant promise is then fulfilled in Jesus. Scholarship pretty widely recognizes that this represented a unique vision in a world full of religious diversity. Rather than measure their Kingdom according to a self serving and self protected religious devotion on one end, or simply forgetting that religious devotion in favor of building their kingdom through the marks of conquest, economy and trade, on the other end, Israel was called to a different way of moving into the world- a people called to the kind of power that flows through the sacrificial image of the Cross. A people who become the least in order to bear witness to the true liberation being extended to all the nations of the world, a vision of liberation which represents Yahweh’s heart for a diverse world born through this being fruitful and multiplying purpose, and which carries the good news of a truly unifying picture of love embodied through its diversity.

Understanding Judges Through the Genesis of This Diversity

A recent and very wonderful episode of the Bible Project does an excellent job at breaking down how this picture is represented straight from the beginning in the Genesis text. Rather than the typical reading of Genesis that simply sees the man created to rule over his wife, and the rest being subservient to the original Adam as a form of understanding the true rule of God, a reading that has more in common with the opposing view of empire, we must begin with the Adam as representing a singular humanity. They note that this humanity is set alongside the idea of a diversity of animals, something that comes up again in the story of Noah in the notion of “pairs”. If Adam (humanity) is seen as the image of God, what we find in the creation story is a model through which to understand this concept of being unified in our diversity. The proper terms for Adam and Even, or hu-man and wo-man carried a strong poetic presence. It’s the idea of hu-man being divided in two so as to have a mirror image of ones self, the same identity as the image of God. Seeing a singular vision of God in the other as the image bearers of His identity and character. And it is in this mirror image that we then see the pattern of the Godly image for creation playing out, along with the ways in which our distorting of this image in the other leads to division. One divided then becomes one through the metaphor of marriage, out of which a singular whole is once again produced. This singuar whole then separates from the one (leaves mother and father) and goes through the same process, embodying the call to be fruitful and multiply.

What’s important to remember here is that this is not dogma but rather imagery, metaphor. If Genesis reflects an origins story, that means it is a temple text. And the tempe in Israel represents this unifying vision for creation with God as its indwelling centre, dwelling in their midst. The whole image of two divided and becoming one and thus creating diversity through this multiplying act is held together by this singular truth- in Yahweh and in Christ we find our unbroken identity that allows our diversity to flourish. It is when we we neglect this diversity for the sake of ourselves or oppress this diversity for the sake of our conquests that the covenant promise for this Edenic vision to be made new becomes broken and compromised. Which is why Jesus as fulfillment becomes such a hopeful and unique idea. When we are unable to see the image of God in what is essentially our mirror image (the other), then we tend to do harmful things to the other and thus ourselves. This is where Jesus becomes the image of God made incarnate (made in the image) and, through His death and and resurrection, indwells as the image of God in the hearts of all. Jesus calls us to see the other anew.

It’s also important to recognize that, as a metaphor, this idea of unity through diversity is blown wide open through the unfolding narrative of adoption that encompasses the story of Israel and the early church. Family, to borrow the ancient language, comes in many ways. Becoming one happens in many ways. Not simply through marriage or blood. The mirror image is simply the “other”, and in coming together in relationship to the other we are able to see the image of God and bear witness to its diverse presence as a single, declarative truth. This is what built the nation of Israel, is the bringing in of a diverse group of people from all different nations and with different gods by binding them together through a shared experience of oppression and liberation and then calling them outwards towards a different way of being together, one not built on the empires of conquest but the Kingdom of God. A people for the word.

This forms the meaning of John 12:47, where it says, “I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world“, and John 3:17 where it says, “do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” To understand the appointed title “judge” in this particular OT book we must see it through this larger vision and context of Israel’s purpose, and the best way to do that is to to return to that origins story, the story that provides the context for continued covenant renewal. And then ask the question, how do we then grow as people of the covenant in our diversity without retreating into division. In truth, if Judges has suggeststed anything to me this early in the the Torah Course, it is that my own creation, de-creation process, which is what we find in judges, is a way towards that end. A recreation process.

Director Bryan Bertino’s recent film The Dark and The Wicked is not only one of the best horror films of 2020, it is one of the best films of 2020. The most interesting dynamic of this story about the horrors of the devil invading the life and home of a particular family is that we aren’t given immediate reason for the invasion. Ordinarily what we find in a horror film, especially those involving a family and a home, is someone invading the space where this (or these) entities already live (a picture of oppression), or someone has done something to welcome the presence into their lives and their home (a metaphor for sin). We get no sense that this family has or is doing anything wrong or is somewhere they are not supposed to be, nor are we offered a clear explanation for why the devil arrives to oppress them. Only that something dark and wicked truly this way comes.

**SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE DARK AND THE WICKED
The film takes place on a secluded farm in an undefined and unnamed American town. The house is occupied by an older man and an older woman (the grandfather and the grandmother), and their family (mother, father and kids) who have arrived to care for their dying grandfather. As this man awaits his death we are made suddenly aware of this increasing presence of something wicked and evil, first through a shocking sequence involving the grandmother who, upon slicing off her fingers while preparing a meal, ends up committing suicide. We then see this same presence moving through the different members of the family, gradually preying on their fear, distorting their vision of what is real and what is not, and gradually consuming their sense of being and seperating themselves from one another, sowing seeds of phsyical division.

The only place we are given a true name for this oppression, this invading entity is within the pages of the grandmother’s journal, where she describes the presence as “the devil”. Outside of this, all we are given is the expression of its intent as it looks to take over and occupy the lives of this family.

What seems to guide the devil’s intent though is something much more clear- death itself. At the center of it all lies this grandfather awaiting death’s gradual arrival. Death here is the great evil that permeates their home and overturns their lives, proving itself unwelcome but also undeniably present. Death is the great enemy for which they wait as they watch their grandfather laying in his bed struggling to breathe and counting the days.

It is this season of waiting that haunts this family, threatening to either bring them together or tear them apart. It is in this season of waiting for death to arrive that they, each of them, lie vulnerable and open to death’s great blow. The promise of this awaited death comes through the signs of the grandfather’s sickness, and with this comes all the uncertainty that death brings. As a parable about death then, maybe even more so this becomes a parable about life. While the darkness consumes in The Dark and the Wicked, the bleak and despairing picture of death’s disruption of their lives and its ability to steal and destroy, often seemingly against our will, beyond our control, we are thus reminded of a crucial part of this waiting- awareness of life. With the story being a stark metaphor for grief, it is this awareness that can help us from being consumed, allowing life and light to break through the darkness in a way that informs rather than destroys.

A NEW SEASON OF WAITING: BONHOEFFER’S CHRISTMAS SERMON
In one of Bonhoeffer’s famous Christmas sermons he speaks about a slightly different season of waiting. He makes the case that in our rush to see the light, to cherish life, we often skim past the darkness of the Christmas story, a season marked by Advent, a time of waiting and anticipating what is to come:

“We take the thought of God coming among us so calmly. It is all the more remarkable when we remember that we so often associate the signs of God in the world with human suffering, the cross on Golgotha. Perhaps we have thought so much of God as love eternal and we feel the warm pleasures of Christmas when he comes gently like a child. We have been shielded from the awful nature of Christmas and no longer feel afraid at the coming near of God Almighty. We have selected from the Christmas story only the pleasant bits, forgetting the awesome nature of an event in which the God of the universe, its Creator and Sustainer, draws near to this little planet, and now speaks to us. The coming of God is not only a message of joy, but also fearful news for anyone who has a conscience.

It is only by facing up to the fearfulness of the event that we can begin to understand the incomparable blessing. God comes into the midst of evil and death, to judge the evil in the world- and in us. And while he judges us, he loves us, he purifies us, he saves us, and he comes to us with gifts of grace and love. He makes us happy as only children know. He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless. A piece of the eternal home is grafted into us. For that reason, we grown-ups can rejoice with all our heart around the Christmas tree- perhaps even more so than the children. We can see already the abundance of God’s gifts.”

In Matthew’s Gospel we see Jesus’ own story anchored in the very Jewish tradition and celebration of the Exodus story, one that begins in a place of enslavement and exile and moves through the waters (of baptism) towards the mountain in which God’s covenant promise is made known through Moses and now fulfilled in the person and ministry, in this movement from death to life, of Jesus. Just as the Temple was built (given birth) and destroyed (in death), Jesus is now raised again as the Temple restored and renewed. God’s presence, which seems so absent in times of darkeness, has finally returned.

And yet even as Christ is raised and the Temple restored, we continue to be called to a time of waiting in the present sense, awaiting the great renewal of all things, the promse of new creation, the new heavens and the new earth that are said to even now be unfolding and pouring out from the establishment of this new Temple of God’s presence in our midst:

“It is not yet Christmas. And neither is it yet the great last Advent, the second coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life, we shall wait and look forward with longing for that day of the Lord, when God says, “I am making everything new!” (Rev 21:5). Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life is a time of waiting; waiting for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Then all the people will be brothers and sisters, rejoicing in the words of the angels’ song: “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests (Luke 2:14).”

The signs of darkness and death call us to remain diligently aware of the promise of light and life. The most difficult part of living in the light is the truth that the darkness remains, and yet in the common and binding narrative of the Exodus story, in its startling and vivid picture of oppression and exile which at times bursts its way through our doors unannounced and uninvited, invading both life and home, while at other times arrives by way of our own invitation, the consequence of our own failures and our own sinfulness, we are reminded that it is through our awareness of this present darkness, the very power of death itself, that we can learn to see the light, to experience life. The darkness is not the whole story, it is simply, to borrow the words of N.T. Wright, a broken sign that points us to something greater- the light and the life. In the coming and long awaited Christ child, the birth of this new creation, this new Temple, there is also living. In this sense, death, darkness, is the very sign of life itself.

And so, as Advent beings we “learn to wait!” We learn to recognize the signs, not only of death but of life, for “He has promised to come.”

When I set out to do this filmtravels2020 exercise back in January as part of my new years resolution plan, I don’t think I considered, or at least failed to imagine just how rich the experience would be. Seeing films from around the world and experiencing new cultures through film has not only enlivened my personal viewing experience, but has enriched my understanding of the ways in which film history intersects with cultural and political histories around the globe. Living in Canada it is far too easy to simply succumb to the shadow that is the great American industry. The degree to which my own viewing habits are directed by American culture and film undoubtedly looms large. Seeing the development of film industries across the world up close and personal then has done two things- reminded me that the world is much larger than this Canadian-American bubble, and second, encouraged me to dig into the distinctives of my own Canadian culture. After all, the question of what makes culture and what makes a people is intimately tied to the development of its dominant public artform, and for the last 120 years film has played that role around the world.

In arriving in Africa, a vast and diverse continent in its own right, another thing I never expected was some timely overlap in my reading life, particularly in relationship to my interest in theology and the Christian faith. A few months ago I had the pleasure of reading a book called “How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind” by Thomas Oden. This was one of those pivotal and revolutionary reads that kind of shook up many of preconceptions and changed how I see faith and the development of faith in my own life and in the world. This book made an excellent pairing with two more subsequent reads: “The Non-Violent Atonement”, which gives a good deal of time exploring how Westernized versions of the Gospel have long been extrapolated from their African (and Eastern) roots, formulating an indivdualized Gospel built around notions of violence, power and conquest that has informed Western Theology as a “spiritualized” concept of atonement that then gets lobbied back onto the more collective African experience that is far more aware and familiar with a “liberating Gospel” (centered aroun “The Exodus” story) through the concept and idea of Western missions.

It is no coincidence then that the ongoing and continued development of a localized film industry in what is a diverse continent mirrors a similar movement in its pushback against Western advancement and colonization, western stereotypes and the pressures of navigating a broad country divided and detached from their collective story.

What is worth pointing out about the African cinema right from that start then is that there is no one single African cinema. To uncover African culture and the development of its people through the lens of its film history is to find the power of the collective within its diversity. There are differences between North African and Sub-Saharan cinema, and between the cinemas of the different countries that make up the whole.

Within this diversity though it is possible to locate key, driving forces, be it the the vastness of the Nigerian Film Industry, which has been documented as the second largest film producer in the world and its vital economic center, or the cultural touchpoint of “Cinema of Egypt”, recognized as one of the oldest industries in the world and arguably the epicenter of the ancient African Tradition. Throughout Africa’s long history of colonization, which has translated to imported cutures across North and South, these two centers of played an equally important role in protecting some sense of who Africans are outside of the acculturating effects of both Christian and Muslim conquest (among others). In terms of an interest in colonizations overlap with the film industry, history recognizes the colonial period as “the Scramble for Africa”, which occured at the hands of Western powers during 1881 and 1914. Thus the interest of Africa’s colonial and post colonial reality coincides with the development of its film industry as a vital part of that history given the development of film leading up to the year 1900 and hitting is formative stride in the early 1900’s. 

Of concern for this discussion is the fact that during the colonial era the ongoing Westernization of Africa was in full force, including the film’s occupation by Western filmmakers. There is much in the way of documentation that reveals the ways African’s were percieved by other territories through film, including Latin America, Europe and of course America. They were shown to be an underdeveloped and lesser people akin to the natives of their land, often romanticized and made ‘exotic” (read: strange, backwards and unfamliar) in ways that degraded them, and often capitalized so as to place them within those localized, national narratives in subervient ways. Maybe even more destructive was the way these depictions began to feed back into African industries as well, framing their percpetion of themselves in particular and largely damaging ways. This paved the way for this Western encroachment through colonization to become a matter of “civilizing” a uncivilized people and nation. And what better way to do this than through control of the film industry, the primary way in which a people and a culture is able to document its collective narrative and story.

Thus, to speak about the development of a truly African cinema one not only needs to look fairly late in the game to document its rise and capture its identity, but we also need to locate it is a developing industry against the reality of colonization. As a post-colonial expression, African Cinema has a definite past-present-future concern and focus, trying to recapture their narrative in a similar frame of the African Christian Tradition, ensuring they don’t forget the struggle of colonialism as the driving narrative, while also making sense of this new and unfamiliar land that awaits them, rich with history and Tradition and a buried cultural presence ready to be made alive and uncovered. It is through the development of the film industry that one can then begin to see the tables hopefullly beginning to turn, for Africans to find themselves in light of their own story rather than the one long imposed by the West.

For this reason, much of the scholarship insists that locating the African film industry begins in the 60’s when many of the diverse African Countries were able to claim some form of independence. This leads to a truly divere continent full of a diversity of films and “kinds” of industry movements, but a diversity shaped by a desire to

“use the art of filmmaking as a political instrument in order to rightly restore their image which had been wrongly depicted by Westerners” precisely by focusing on aspect of the “neocolonial” condition.   

Just to give a sense of how long it took for Africa to be able to reclaim this sense of identity, a few stats:
– Considered the first film directed by a black African, Afrique Sur Seine explores the difficulties of being an African in 1950s France.- Allégret later made Zouzou, starring Josephine Baker, the first major film starring a black woman
– The first African film to win international recognition was Sembène Ousmane‘s La Noire de… also known as Black Girl.
– the first African film to win an Academy Award for Foreign Language Film was Tsotsi (2006), a South-African production.
Stats like these show just burdened the continent was by its past, and how long it took them to even begin to overcome this long shadow and find representation of themselves even in their own context, countries and land. Perhaps even more striking is the battle that the Director considered to be the “father of African Cinema”, Ousmane Sembene, faced in terms of trying to pull from the most influential voices in African cinema, who were not African at all, a sense of African’s as people rather than, to borrow Sembene’s own words, “insects”. To work in film on their own land and in their own industries largely meant working under a foreign culture casting African’s in particular roles. Sembene, along with Oumarou Ganda, had to fight like hell to make something out of nothing, and he became incredibly influential, particularly in the area of Senegal.

One of the ways to track the rising diversity of the African film inudstry and cultural identity is through the different colonizing powers. For example, the struggles that French colonies faced as industries intimately tied to the support of the French Ministry of Cooperation, a fact that prevented Africans from making “African” films (see the Laval Decree), was slightly different from Portugese colonies who had little to no industry influence and simply used the local film industry for colonial propaganda, which again depicted Africans working in the industry as insects.
Add to this that colonization left a fractured continent having to navigate three main cultural and religious influences- African Tradition, Arab-Islam, and Euro-Christian, and you have a complicated and complex landscape that Africans as a whole have had to try and navigate.

“Like other forms of creative expression by Africans, filmmaking constitutes a form of discourse and practice that is not just artistic and cultural, but also intellectual and political. It is a way of defining, describing and interpreting African experiences with those forces that have shaped their past and that continue to shape and influence the present. It is a product of the historical experiences of Africans, and it has direct bearing and relevance to the challenges that face African societies and people of African descent in the world in the present moment and in the future. As product of the imagination, filmmaking constitutes, at the same time, a particular mode of intellectual and political practice. Thus, in looking at filmmaking, in particular, and the other creative arts, in general, one is looking at particular insights into ways of thinking and acting on individual as well as collective realities, experiences, challenges and desires over time. African thinking and acting on their individual and collective realities, experiences, challenges and desires are diverse and complex, and cinema provides one of the most productive sites for experiencing, understanding and appreciating such diversity and complexity.”
– Mbye B. Cham

The essential reality of the African experience through the lens of the African film indusry according scholarship is that “The situation contemporary African societies live in is one in which they are dominated on several levels: politically, economically and culturally.” As one source reflected, the African filmmaker is often compared to the traditional griot., whose primary task is to capture and give back to the people pictures and narratives that can speak to their collective experience. Looking back to African Tradition, the primary point of expression which would then unfold into South Africa in its diveristy, we can located the prominance of oral practice, which African filmmakers have been able to use to recapture a true sense of African identity. Given the prominance of colonization in its narrative, what much of the scholarhip also narrows in on is the ways in which Africa was able to take the revolutionary movements and language of Italian neoralism and New and Third Wave film expressions and shape it around their own revolutionary language, a language that is well suited to oppressed societies looking for reform and third world practices. Before arriving at the modern shape of African Cinema, a big part of what helps give shape to these different industries today is this indebted style and focus to giving film back to the people on the ground and allowing film to tell the stories of the people on location and incorporating real Africans who are then empowered to tell their stories.

In terms of giving shape to a more recognizably modern and now developed (and still developing industry) across Africa, we begin with this overarching truth:

“The African cinema industry acknowledges undeniably the need to develop its own way of making films, support their local initiatives, and invest in cinematic cultures such as films festivals. Although the African film industry does not currently attract the same levels of popularity claimed by the well-developed European and American industries, it has shown significant growth and progress in the beginning of the 21st century, a fact reflected in part by the creation of a Journal of African Cinema and African TV channels.” This can also include the creation of the African Film Summit in South Africa in 2006 and the African Movie Acadamy Awards which started in 2004, which has been instrumental in the growth of the Nigerian Film Industry, a kind of epicentre, and in creating a unified ability and opportunity to develop industries across the continent. Or things like the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers created in 1975 and the the Charter of the African Cineaste that flowed from that. This helped give a unified focus to the larger continent on the importance of giving voice to past-present-future driven narratives.

To narrow in on Nigerian Cinema, known for the growth of “Nollywood” (which produced 1844 films, a record in 2013, and has only been growing), what brings definition to this bustling industry is low budget films made for the local communities and without concern for international focus. These are stories meant to build up, reinforce and give voice for a local culture, and more importantly to do so without being dependent on outside industries such as France and America. This industry is pushing for the cause of indepence and autonomy.Contrast this with a more continent wide movement into a genre known as Afro-Futurism (think Black Panther, or if you are an ignorant and uninformed white male like me: https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/what-to-watch-after-black-panther-an-afrofuturism-primer.html).
These films have a specific interest in speaking into the Diaspora and finding a way to connect voices abroad with voices in Africa.

Contrast this still yet with something Somoliwood, a more youth oriented industry (in contrast with Nollywood) interested in pointing towards the future expressions of young Africans.

All across the Continent you can find these kinds of stories. Stories on the one end like Equatorial Guinea, who continues under a Dictatorship that has stifled its ability to build a localized industry, to the superpower of the Continent in South Africa’s rise in financial status. Two very different expresssions both located within the larger African experience. Or a place Burkina Faso, a smaller locale which boasts a wealth of locally driven entities who are pushing to have a real international presence. Or the one-two punch of Nairobi and Kenya, with Nairobi doing some exceptional work in investing in and uncovering local talent (behind the award winning film Nairobi Half Life and Out of Africa and the home of the Hot Sun Foundation) and Kenya doing the leg work of building international connections. And one can’t overlook the cultural forces of Morroco, which boasts desired locales and festivals, and Egypt, which holds a massive influence and presence in the Middle East and Arab world. It is still the oldest and one of the most cultured and enlivened industries in Africa.

“In spite of its youth and the variety of overwhelming odds against which it is struggling, cinema by Africans has grown steadily over this short period of time to become a significant part of a global cinema civilization to which it brings many significant contributions. More specifically, it is part of a worldwide film movement aimed at constructing and promoting an alternative popular cinema, one that corrects the distortions and stereotypes propagated by dominant western cinemas, and one that is more in sync with the realities, the experiences, the priorities and desires of their respective societies.” This sets its sights on things like the loss and reclaiming of Tradition, oppression and liberation, immigration, diaspora and localized cultures, colonialism and post colonialism, racism and reclamation of identity and image, among many other things.

If there is something that emerged from the discussions of scholars and historians and filmmakers it is the necessary focus in Africa on film as communication:

“One can argue that film is an important part of the cultural domain in any country, but particularly so in South Africa where social change depends on the quality of communication in the society. Communication is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and film and video can make an important contribution to the democratisation and development that need to take place within this society… most Afrikaans films communicated by means of obsolete symbols that had little intercultural communication value. They painted a one-sided and stereotypical portrait of the Afrikaner, leading to a misconception about who and what the Afrikaner was. Furthermore, the negative portrayal of blacks as a servant class in these films is a visual symbol of the deep-seated apartheid ideology.”  If this is the damage that coopted communication can represent, what is happening in the current African rennasaince is a film industry looking to communicate better, both in terms of the importance of their diversity which moves from North to South, but also in the sense of affirming a true African identity. This is what lies behind the goal of all of these movements, modern developments and industry developments. And if it has the opportunity to say anything, the future is hopeful.

As a fun note to leave this on to that end:

“In Mauritania CINEPARC RIBAT AL BAHR is an open air Drive-in Cinema located in Nouakchott, the only one of its kind in Africa. In addition to the projection schedule, the drive-in have a new application iOS and Android provides you with the biggest international movie database in which you can find information such as plot summaries, cast members, production crews, critics reviews, ratings, fan trivia, and much more about movies, series, and all cinematic work.”

SOURCES
http://www.experience-africa.de/index.php?en_annual-african-film-festival-2013_african-film-industry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Africa#:~:text=African%20cinema%20is%20film%20production,primary%20cinematic%20technology%20in%20use.&text=Auguste%20and%20Louis%20Lumi%C3%A8re%20screened,filmed%20by%20Egyptians%20in%201907.
African cinema: a historical, theoretical and analytical exploration by Martin Both
Cinema and Media StudiesAfrican Cinema
Frank Ukadike
Questioning African cinema : conversations with filmmakers / Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike
Flickering shadows: cinema and identity in colonial Zimbabwe / J.M. Burns
African cinemas: decolonizing the gaze / Olivier Barlet
https://africanfilmny.org/articles/film-and-history-in-africa-a-critical-survey-of-current-trends-and-tendencies/
https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-157
https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/779/648?inline=1
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/57721
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330689452_African_film_in_the_21st_Century_some_notes_to_a_provocation
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820132
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1771833
file:///C:/Users/jcourtney/Downloads/Dialnet-HistoryCultureAndIdeologyInSouthAfricanCinema-4952012.pdf
https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-south-african-film-industry-timeline-1895-2003
https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/view/1139/1368
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/movies/touki-bouki-streaming-afrofuturism.html
https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/what-to-watch-after-black-panther-an-afrofuturism-primer.html

Some thoughts from the book of Zechariah as I keep and mind and pray for America and all my friends in America this week.

“Return to me and I will return to you”. (Zechariah 1:3)
This word of hope covers the book of Zechariah as it speaks of a day and a time when what is wrong will be made right. When a people in self perpetuated, self induced exile will brought together and made whole in a city described as being without walls and gates and surrounded by the “fire” of the Lord.

This grand imagery sets the stage for the great drama of Israel’s history which has now come a point of return following many years in exile. In a climatic moment, Zechariah imagines a coming king simply named “The Branch” who will bring about their necessary salvation, liberating the people from oppression, bringing them back into the land, and restoring their purpose.

One thread that runs through the prophecies or “oracles” found in this book is the unique progression of this promised return and restoration:
1. It begins with the fruit of their forefather’s “repentance” being made known in the present generation. Thus the decisions we make today make a better world for those who will inhabit tomorrow. Here we get a people who have looked upon their past and repented, which gives way to the proclomation of the continued faithfulness of God as He is said to dwell in their midst. Repentance is an active word that literally renders “to turn and look in a different direction”, and here it is away from exile and the model of empire that surrounds them and towards a new Kingdom, a better Kingdom symbolized in the rebuilding of the temple.

2. Secondly, a “flying scroll” identified as “the curse” goes into all the earth collecting the “iniquities” (the present state of things, the mess of things) and places it far away from the people so that the land can be restored.

3. Third, the people in the restored land are then be tasked to go into all the earth tasked with a new and better way as a witness to the continued restoration of all and the good of all.

This is what leads to the future restored land/city overflowing with new life. And what lies at the center of this picture is a man named Joshua, a high priest who stands as an image of the coming “Branch”, a name later writers will apply directly to Jesus. This future King will bring together the office of both King and Priest as a “counsel of peace”, freeing the oppressed, unifying the people, and restoring the earth.

As I was reading, two key moments in the book stood out for me in terms of how this promise will come about.
The first comes from a conversation between God and Zechariah. Looking towards a people who are stuck in the mess that they have made for themselves, God calls Zechariah in the beginning of Chapter 11 to “become a shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter” using two staffs named “favor” and “union”. But Zechariah became impatient with them, saying that the people detested him. “What is to die, let die” he says.

This is contrasted with Chapters 12-14 which then repeats the pattern of salvation as it looks forward to the day when the temple will be rebuilt, the land restored and the people saved for the sake of the world. This image of hope revolves around the one “who they have pierced”, “the Branch” who will come to make God known once again in their midst. And instead of shepherding with a “what is to die, let die” attitude, this future King promises to come near and to be present, to restore, to rid the iniquities of the world. This echos the early sentiment where God declares the suffering people and nation to be “the apple of (His) eye.” (2:8)

We then get a repeated picture of the iniquities being removed, freedom from oppression, followed by the call to bear the fruit of this salvation through their care and concern for all the world. This is the purpose of the temple they are rebuilding. It looks nothing like the old one, but through it comes something even greater, the one who will be a true council of peace. This is the exact same image we get in Chapter 3. Chapter 3 opens with a dramatic scene featuring Joshua (high priest), an angel of the Lord, the Lord and Satan, who currently stands as Joshua’s judge. Satan is rebuked, and Joshua, currently clothed in filthy garments, is told to remove them. They represent his “iniquities”, and thus in being reclothed in “pure vessels” he is said to be judged differently, judged according to God’s view of him not Satan’s.

And yet here is the important thing. This comes with a charge- be faithful and you will be my representative. The task to bear witness to a new way of being, a new way of living, a new way of seeing world, the way of this council of peace, is one that doesn’t simply demand repetance, but participation. This is where the real Kingdom work begins.

And what is this better way? To what end are we called to work? We get this in chapter 7 where the people returning from the exile ask about what they need to do to gain the Lord’s favor. Here the Lord reminds them, is it not me who has been with you the whole time? They have nothing to earn. They are already loved, cherished, welcomed, longed after. So what should they do? “Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against one another in your heart.” (7:9).

This is the way of the Branch. This is the way of the council of peace. This is the way to a people renewed, a land overflowing with goodness and grace, mercy and love. May we all bear witness to this end.

Some reflections from my read through the Book of Haggai this morning

This tiny, two chapter book packs a punch. Even more worthwhile is considering what it has to say to us during Covid as we experience our own collective, virus bred exile.

EXILE IN CONTEXT: THE POWER OF A NAME

The context of the book is the return from a long period of exile and the rebuilding of the temple that had been destroyed which ushers in what is known as the Second Temple period, the world into which Jesus was born, ministered, died and rose again.

The name Haggai is a poetic rendering of the word “festival” (festal), which accomplishes two things in this narrative:

1. It positions Haggai’s relevance as a prophet given that he does not arrive with a genealogy. By associating him with a context (an important festival), it gives his prophetic voice a necessary weight.
2. It gives Haggai’s message a broader context within the larger narrative of Israel’s story. We don’t exactly know what festival Haggai is being associated with, but given the references to Egypt and the Exodus it seems clear and fair to me that this would be calling back to the related festival of both bondage and liberation of that story. As will become clear, the present-future context of this book’s prophetic word can also then locate that same Exodus context in Jesus’ own story. This is both a call to present action and a word of anticipation and hope for the future. The restoration of the temple will bring about the expected return of God’s presence to Israel.

So to restate the context: Israel has been given to exile and the temple destroyed. Babylon has changed hands and the new rulers have allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. Some of them stay in Babylon, some of them return. This is in the 6th century (Cyrus, the Persian ruler captured Babylon in 539, which when Cyrus’s son Cambyses died was replaced by Darius, once a general). This is also during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and during the second year of Darius (520). Ezra 3:1-4:5 tells of how the work of rebuilding the temple stalled when opposition arose. Darius’ support was necessary for the temple rebuilding (Ezra 5 and 6)

In this sense, King/Ruler and Temple are two themes that are intimately linked, with Zerubbabel promised the heir of David’s throne, who the prophet’s word goes out to and from, along with Joshua, the high priest. (1:1), along with the question of oppressive empires in the immediate sight and application of the prophetic word.

This consideration of two Kingdoms, two empires is then filtered backwards into Israel’s story (Exodus and Exile), and forwards into the expectation of a future temple, with the temple providing an image of continuity, both in the shared experience and in the faithfulness of God. The problem we are told is that the people are complaining about the current state of the rebuilding project, and the Lord says in verse 3, “is it a time for you to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruin.?” (1:3-4). They know this temple being rebuilt is smaller than the former (Ezra 3:12). Into this response comes the word of the Lord through the prophet Haggai.

THE WORD OF THE LORD
The book of Haggai is written around four messages from “the Lord”, each with its own specific date and context and concern. And here is the important trajectory or pull of these messages- they are addressed to the prophet, which extends to ruler and priest, which extends to the “remnant”, which extends to all. This frames the large picture of a future restoration as a message of hope to the nations.

Again, the context is exile, return from exile, and the prospect of rebuilding a temple that no longer looks the same. It is a shell of what it once was, which could easily lead to frustration and apathy.

For my own reflections, I was considering this in light of Covid. As we look on the Church during Covid, it appears to be a shell of what it once was. In fact, as we look out at all of society, this is what we find. This has been a kind of collective exile, one that is able to remind us of our shared humanity, an exile that we are still only imagining our eventual return from. If we can imagine a future day when we can return, the words in Haggai to the people, “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?” arrives with a biting force. It strikes me that I never figured a virus could be as divisive as politics and religion, and yet this has been precisely the temptation on a global front. A people divided. If we see the Church in with Israel’s story then, the call is for the Church to demonstrate a picture of an undivided people, with Israel the means of a message of hope being sent out into all the world, bringing and ushering the world into a greater picture of an undivided Kingdom.

THE CALL TO BE STRONG, GET TO WORK, AND NOT TO FEAR

So in the first message from the Lord through the prophet for the ruler and the priest and the remnant (some had returned to Jerusalem, some remained scattered in Babylon) and thus the world, we get the call to “consider your ways” (1:5), for you have sown much and harvested little.

To restate this in other words, I hear this in this way. All the years of having Church (the temple) as normal, and all the struggle that comes with it’s loss, what has all this experience been for if not for this rebuilding time, this time of harvesting the faith that has been sown through the life of the Church? Will we be like the people Haggai’s word is speaking to, hunkering down in anxiety, feeling like the current state of being, things being less than ideal, the Church looking like a shell of what it once was should lead us to retreat inward into our houses? The bubbles or our isolated worlds and lives that exile has demanded and created?

The natural consequence of retreating instead of building is a lack of the blessings of the harvest. The fruit of the faithful witness in terms of healing and liberation of the oppressed, the hurting, the marginalized, the sick. Hear the word of the Lord here. If the word, “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? carries weight, so does the following word from the Lord, which is “how do you see it (the state of the Temple) now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?” Out of which we get the call to “be strong” and to “work”. Now is the time to do the work of the Church.

Calling them back to Egypt as the guiding narrative and the exile as their most recent reality, God reminds them that “my Spirit remains in your midst”, so “fear not.” For God will shake the heavens and all the treasures of the nations will come in. “I will fill this house with glory.” This rebuilding will lead to an even greater temple and the restoration of the heavens and the earth. This might not look like it once did, but I am with you, and thus you can trust that this temple, which is a shell of what it once was, is not the end of the story.

SHAKING AND RESTORATION

A word on this notion of “shaking” that can help us bring this call into our own context:
This restorative message has a future and present context. The spirit is encouraging people to get to work in rebuilding, and thus this shaking happens in the contextualized marriage of both God’s work and our work. Shaking has a couple contexts in scripture. One is the fall of Kingdoms, of which the Prophet would have had oppressive empires in his sight in line with the Exodus story of liberation. Another is the trembling and shaking that comes from trials and suffering. A third is the natural shaking of the earth given an interpretive and divine force.

The shaking in Haggai 2 is rooted in the past of “once more” this will happen, which takes us back to the pivotal event in Israel’s history, the original covenant-broken covenant (read: fall) narrative. (Hebrews 12; Exodus 32-34) When it says in Hebrews, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens” (Hebrews 12:25-29), it has this Haggai passage in mind. This is the image of bringing together heaven and earth, or the prayer “on earth as it is in Heaven” being made real, so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
When we pair this with Haggai 2:7, where is says that this shaking will lead to “the treasures of all the nations” coming in to the future Temple, we get an even heightened sense of this “shaking’s” present-future context. Treasures translates to “desire”, which in its plural form gets translated to the desired or collective “whole”. What this has in mind then is once again the Exodus story (Exodus 11:2-3; 12:35-36) where literal treasure (materials) from the Egyptians are used to rebuild the temple. Think of the wise men coming from the East as this imagery then gets applied to Jesus who is declared as the full restoration of the Temple, God with us.

As this remnant of people gazes on the present state of things and is tempted to shrink back into their state of exiled anxiety, this word pierces through their experience to point them to a greater reality not simply rooted in their present, but in a past-present-future reality. This is where they are to find the strength to see this as a time to come out of our houses and “get to work”. And the amazing picture that we have here is that important trajectory that moves from the word of the Lord all the way to the nations. The work of the Church is for the world, especially in times of exile and rebuilding.

And the thing about this promise is that the physical Temple, the picture of God’s dwelling place is now Jesus, and Jesus dwells in us, in the world, in creation. The liberating message of the Exodus story flows out into a new image of Christ with us in our own exile, this time of Covid. As we gaze upon the destruction this virus has caused, this prophetic word calls us to be awakened to a greater sense of purpose and faith and grace. Christ with us, Christ for the world. It moves us from our state of anxiety and exile to see what this act of rebuilding entails in the world. This is the Christian mission.

As we continue to tread through this time of exile, may this word arrive as a message of comfort, peace and charge. God with us. The same message that we will be declaring in a couple months from now as we enter the season of Advent and Christmas. Therefore do not fear. Be strong in the hope and reality of the spirit and get to work rebuilding God’s Kingdom in our midst, that promised new creation, the new heavens and the new earth that looks to usher in the true treasure of the nations as a greater vision of hope and renewal.

Some reflections since I was up early this morning.

I’ve really been struck this year by how much of our understanding of God seems to hing on Genesis 1-3. It is striking how much of scripture has these three chapters in mind, with Revelation itself essentially retelling the narrative in a contextualized fashion.

And really narrowing in on these three chapters I think can help us make sense of our own context. Consider the following:

In Chapter 1 we are given a cosmic view of creation that essentially establishes the 3 tier view of the ancient world- the land, the waters out of which the land is formed, and the heavens.

The heavenly and earthly realm are interconnected in the view of ancient Judaism, indicating that the whole is God’s abode.

We then come to the interesting relationship between the two creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2. What’s interesting to note is how we move from Genesis 2, a cosmic perspective with the use of both the plural elohim (a term that denotes the spiritual beings who occupy the divine realm) and the plural adam (humankind… which follows the creation of the multitudes of creatures that occupy both earth and sky) and the vast expanse of both heaven and earth to the singular Yahweh-Elohim and the singular Adam and Eve and a particular use of “land” as a locale in chapter 2.

In Genesis 1 we find God calling the cosmos (heaven and earth, and all that is in them) into form. Then in the rest of Genesis (beginning in Genesis 2) we have the account of what came of (or developed out of) God’s initial creation, how humans responded to God’s call to be his image in the world.

This prepares us to move into Genesis 3. Notice that when we are introduced to the serpent and the serpent is convincing “the woman” to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil we have a use of “elohim” ( You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God) that is commenting on this use of plural and singular. By using the plural in this instance, what becomes established are two things:
1. The pattern in relationship of service, or being “in service to” rather than have power over. We find this image in this move from the plural elohim (divine beings) to the singular (Yahweh, which renders elohim over elohim… the source of life)
2. In a world where both the divine and earthly realm were seen as interconnected and coexisting realities, to be like god meant to subvert this notion of “in service to” towards having “power over”, with the emphasis moving in two directions- in service to creation and one another and in service to God as his image bearers to creation.

The emphasis then on wisdom (and Genesis is considered wisdom literature), which in 3:6 says is the root of the woman’s desire, is one of being like god, or a member of the divine realm. Later in Genesis 6:2 we see this same contrast with the “descendants of Adam and the sons of Noah” in chapter 5 being set in relationship to the “sons of god”, which again is the inference of the plural elohim in indicating the sons of “divine council” or the divine realm, or those who saw themselves as descendents of the gods/the divine realm. This is the cosmic-earthly context in relationship.

What follows Chapter 6 is the story of the flood, which basically reverses the picture towards a deconstructing or de-creation process, literally ending with a naked human being. A return to Adam, with the land once pulled from the waters meeting with the collapsing of the three tiered universe where the waters once protected both below and above reflecting humanities desire to have power over rather than being in service to.

Before we arrive at this deconstruction/decreation process though, what we have is the story that binds creation and decreation together into a promise of recreation. A way of connecting Genesis 1 and 2 with Genesis 6. In the Garden, in this specific piece of land, we have two trees, one indicating the source of life and the other indicating the source of death, which is captured throughout scripture in terms of this duality of blessings and curses, life and death, two kingdom realities. It also sets in play the three central agencies at play in this biblical narrative- Yaheweh, the Powers (of Sin and Death, the evil one, the principalities), and Humanity.

Now notice the central pattern set in play in Genesis 3 in terms of the role of the second agency (the Powers)- the serpent accuses God of lying which leads the man to accuse the woman which leads the woman to accuse the serpent.

The serpent personified as lies and falsehoods which is embodied in “accusation”, a pattern which subverts the “in service to” in exchange for being in power over another.

The curse that results in this choosing of life and death then has a double result- the personified image of the divine beings is made into a serpent which is made the lowest of all creatures, the man set in power over the woman, and the land power over the man. This becomes the reality of this inversion of our created purpose to be “in service to” creation, one another and God, the choosing of death over life.

Consider the two trees as well in the book’s temple context- the tree of life is the tabernacle or temple, which is where God’s presence is seen to dwell, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the Law, which is said to reveal the Powers of Sin and Death.

This subversion then becomes realized in the first expression of this new reality, accusation which leads to jealousy in Cain and Abel, which leads to death- the building blocks of civilization.

Which begs the question, what comes of this? Are we simply stuck in this pattern of subversion, exchanging service to for power over? A constant ebb and flow between oppressed and oppressor? This is where chapter 3 give us an important image that alludes to the promise of recreation or restoration. Speaking of the serpent, it says
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The woman, which is later made singular as “the mother of all living”, will bring an offspring that will “strike your head”. But this comes with a cost. The serpent will strike the offspring’s “heel”. This sets up the image of the seed which will bring new creation, which flows through the covenant with Noah, Abraham, and Moses on the mountain meeting with God (which in ancient Jewish tradition actually functioned as the original “fall” narrative… Moses on the mountain with the people making an image of Yahweh down below, the embodiment of these two trees). Notice as you work through the biblical narrative how we have this pattern as well- individual (Abraham) to family (Jacob) to nation (Israel) to family (David) to individual (Jesus), with the foundation of the covenant being a promise to bless “all” the nations of the earth.

What’s important about all of these patterns is how they allow us to connect our reality, which is what the Genesis narrative was intended to do, to an origins story or working mythology (that is, a story that connects present reality-history-mythic origins) that can help us understand where we are today (which for the present audience of Genesis would have been wilderness and then exile). As it reads, “He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.”

In the larger patterns we get two working images here- this exchanging of a given reality with a chosen reality (life and death, service for power), and this developing image of restoration and recreation that begins with Abraham and culminates with Jesus as the means for entering our chosen reality in order to give us a new reality. In this sense the guarding of the way to the tree of life is both the protecting of this divine-earthly intereconnected relationship which sets creation in service to rather than in power over, and the guarding of the way back to this interconnected relationship where the source of life, the Elohim of elohims dwells in the whole of the created order, land, water and heavens.

The grand truth of Genesis 1-3 is that all is Yahweh’s domain. When we exchange the truth for the lie, when we take on the role of the accuser, what happens is we then end up standing in judgment over creation, over one another, and even ourselves. When we do this, when we function in this way, we then place ourselves, our systems, our desires, our motives, both individually and collectively, in power over the other. If we are to apply that to today, we see this in the long history of patriarchal systems and structures, where the male figure has positioned itself in power over the woman. We see this is racial structures, in the colonizing realities where races have positioned themselves in power over other races. We see this in global developments where nations have set themselves in power over other nations. This is a reflection of the Powers, the lie of the accuser, the embodiment of our desire. When we miss this aspect of the Genesis narrative, we miss how this plays into the rest of scripture as we see Yahweh being distinguished as the Elohim above Elohim’s, the “I am who I am” or the “I will be who I will be”, constantly working to subvert the measure of these desires to look to subvert in service to, or in relationship to, for notions of in power over. We see this in the ways women are elevated, slavery is reconstructed, empire is dismantled, patriarchy is criticized, and power structures are judged. To choose this reality of the lies of the accusation is to inherit a corrupted order. We feed the Powers which hold this world in its present state, in bondage to a reality that is different than Genesis 1, and that plays through Genesis 2. Notice how in Genesis 2 we get this interesting twist on Genesis 1 which moves from “good” to the final declaration “very good”. In Chapter 2 Yahweh-Elohim looks at man and says “It is NOT GOOD that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” This was the vision for life- togetherness, the call to live “in service to” one another, community. In our diversity we embody the divine image when we recognize this truth. As image bearers (In the ancient world the idol, the image of the divine being, was the final thing to be placed in the temple. In ancient Israel we are the idol, the image bearers) we are intended to reflect this reality back out to the whole of creation. When we don’t we end up with civilization built on power, systems that hold power over one another.

And yet the grand image, the hopeful image that we find in the Judeo-Christian narrative is that this picture of the serpent being crushed and the serpent biting the heel is one of a demonstrably different way, a way that is ultimately revealed in Jesus, who demonstrated himself by lowering himself so as to raise up his creation and show us how it is God’s Kingdom, this cosmic-earthly reality in which we live, was intended to operate. We are called in scripture to follow Jesus to the Cross, to follow in way of the Cross, setting ourselves in service to creation and one another and to God. When we forget what this looks like, look to the Cross. This is what it means to participate in communion as a central part of our common liturgy.

And it is at the table that our liturgy then moves us to the resurrection promise. The very image of recreation. But what the communion table does is invite us into those few chapters that connect Genesis 1-2 (creation) to Genesis 6 (decreation), which is the central pattern of deconstruction and reconstruction, a pattern we are called to participate in daily and faithfully. It is when we do this that we can then gain a vision of that Abrahamic promise, that grand movement that brings us from individual (ourselves) to family (church) to nation (collective), all for the sake of the world, the world that remains and is and always will be God’s true domain, the domain we have been called to occupy as Yahweh’s image bearers.

According to film historian Daw-Ming Lee, one of the major gaps in scholarship surrounding the study of Taiwan film history is the period before the 50’s.

“Relatively few books and essays, in any language, have explored Taiwan cinema during the Japanese colonial period. In the past quarter of a century, most film studies on Taiwan cinema in the West discuss only films and their makers after 1950, especially those after the emergence of Taiwan New Cinema.” (Daw-Ming Lee)

The reason for this is because these films were never considered Japanese cinema, but were also, to varying degrees, distinguished from main land china, leaving them with a lack of cultural recognition on the international stage while also isolated as a territory.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that, in dealing with Taiwanese Cinema one also needs to navigate the competing and interconnected world of Chinese-language films and Chinese politics as a whole, with a distinct Taiwanese Cinema (and culture for that matter) only becoming truly visible in recent years with the New Wave, and even then being burdened by this complicated landscape.

“Research in world cinema addresses three major areas of Chinese-language cinema:
Chinese cinema, Hong Kong cinema and Taiwanese cinema.

Most research on Chinese-language cinema focuses on kung fu movies, authorship, political identity, gender, and aesthetics. The best-known research on Taiwanese cinema relates to Taiwanese New Cinema and authorship.” (The Film Industry in Taiwan: A Political Economy Perspective).

To truly understand Taiwanese New Cinema (New Wave), one needs to be able to understand their colonial past, as their more recent struggles to define themselves over (and depending on the lens one uses, against) mainland China has tried to locate their identity within and in relationship to this developing history. Taiwanese cinema was the earliest of Japan’s colonial industries (film markets), and can also be considered its most vibrant, which allowed the Taiwanese people to use this fact to quietly grow their culture even in in the midst of colonization.

For example, a defining element of Japanese early cinema was the incorporation and development of the “benshi”, artists who would narrate films at public showings. One of the characteristics of the benshi artform was that a different one would perform at different showings, thus making each viewing unique not only in terms of how the story was told in a particular and different flavor, but in its demonstration of and ability to highlight the cultural touch points of a given area and a regional expression. The Taiwanese took this tradition and renamed it piān-sū, which allowed its local culture to be preserved and celebrated through their particular interpretations of films showing in their Country, which at that time were largely exhibitionist films coming in from the outside. Later on, the emphasis the Taiwanese New Cinema would (and does) place on interior spaces (with symmetrical lines and spaces and walled rooms) is representative of this same sort of Japanese influence being interpreted through their own cultural and specific Taiwanese lens, as is their dedication to slow cinema and a critical focus on encroaching urbanization.

One thing is for sure. Taiwanese Cinema has played a huge and significant role in helping Taiwan to establish itself as a distinct culture and identity in what grew to be a complicated political system in China, especially as it developed from an “exhibition” state under Japanese rule to a commercial hub in relationship to Hong Kong (dominated by the Central Motion Picture Corporation, a state-sponsored studio with heavy censorship characteristic of an authoritarian state). It’s desire to distinguish itself as a place dedicated to true artistic expression and to give rise to authentic artistic voices and the concern of the Manifesto that would eventually help to bring change and a sense of definition to the Country as a whole, would be the very thing that would allow the Country to tell the story of it’s people, its place, and its circumstance. And this persists through its particular sociopolitical challenges:

“(On a sociopolitical level) Taiwan has grown increasingly isolated on the international stage. Whereas Taiwan had official diplomatic relations with almost 70 states back in the late 1960s, only 17 states currently still recognize the Taiwanese government as the legitimate representative of the Chinese people… Contrary to what its political and economic impotence might suggest, however, there is one area in which Taiwan has played a hugely important role: cinema.” (Andrew Emerson, The Beginners Guide: New Taiwan Cinema)

As mentioned, it would be impossible to avoid mention of the Tawain Cinema Manifesto, signed by 54 filmmakers in 1987, when talking about Taiwan Cinema. It criticized censorship and the governments failure to recognize film as a necessary and important artform in the sociopolitical arena, pushing for a distincly Taiwanese culture and industry and leading to international recognition. Why do manifesto’s matter? Because they speak to distinct Taiwanese concerns:

“One can think of New Taiwanese films’ lack of narrative as one way in which they sought to distinguish themselves from their Hollywood and Hong Kong counterparts. More generally, this lack of narrative also speaks to the underlying intentions of New Taiwanese filmmakers. They weren’t so much interested in telling stories as they were in evoking, analyzing, and critiquing an atmosphere and way of life.” (Andrew Emerson)

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
To understand the Taiwan Film industry, it’s important to understand the history of the Country.

This reaches back to the overthrowing of the Qing Dynasty (1911), and the establishing of the Republic of China and the Chinese Nationalist Party (under Dr. Sun Yat-sen). With Taiwan having been ceded to Japan and made a Japanese colony following the war in 1894 and not made a part of China until 1946, their relationship developed somewhat estranged from both Japan and China for a good part of its most recent history. This would lead to Taiwan being the place where the Chinese Nationalists, following the civil war in the late 1940’s, would flee and establish roots when Communist Rule (under Mao) overtook the Republic of China. Here the Nationalists would begin to think about their Chinese identity, refusing to disassociate from the ROC under communist rule and essentially creating the two state structure (the PROC… Peoples Republic of China, and the ROC). Taiwan became something of a safe haven due to protection from international forces (including the U.S.).

It is because of this precarious position, of being considered a province and a Country, and being under the Nationalist Party, the provincial government and military rule, and encroaching influences and pressures coming from those protecting them from Communist China (Western influence), that the film industry was forced to build itself from the ground up, essentially establishing itself as the honest and integral voice of its people from within these political entities.

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE AND THE RELEVANCE OF ART
A hugely important facet and characteristic of Taiwan’s cinematic identity was the ability of their specific language to persist through both Japanese and Chinese rule, both of which positioned Taiwan primarily as an exhibitionist territory (and in the case of Hong Kong, committing them to commercial and genre films). This protecting of and dedication to their language allowed them to build their culture, imagine (and reimagine) their past, and discover their story without being consumed by these external forces, even with (and through) the development of the”Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC)”, the unifying of Chinese Cinema into a single entity. And given how dedicated (and successful) Hong Kong was to producing mainstream and commercial films, their connection to the story of their people through language was what allowed them to begin to develop a serious film industry built on artistic creativity rather than money.

“By the end of the 1970s Taiwan audience was antipathetic to the unimaginative remakes or copies of “national policy films,” martial arts swordplay wuxia pian, and kung fu films, as well as romantic Chiungyao films and melodramatic wenyi pian, causing a significant decline at the box office. It was against such a sluggish economic environment that a fresh group of young writers and directors began to make different and original films.” (Daw-Ming Lee)

This dedication to artistic and creative value would lead to the influential Taiwanese New Cinema movement and the infamous Manifesto that would help give it concrete definition and form.

“Most films made by Taiwan New Cinema (TNC) directors were successful, both critically and commercially, from 1982 to 1984. After 1985, when many of their films did not do well, such as Edward Yang’s Taipei Story (1985), critical voices against Taiwan New Cinema started to appear in the press, and such critics gradually formed an alliance with the traditional film industry (“old” cinema). The conflict between filmmakers and critics who supported and opposed the TNC extended from newspapers and journals to the jury meetings at the 1985 Golden Horse Awards. Contrary to the animosity shown against Taiwan New Cinema films in Taiwan, international film festivals in Europe and North America began to celebrate the TNC films, especially those by Hou and Yang, which won numerous awards beginning in 1986. Facing the unfriendly press and film critics, discrimination from the local film industry, and an apathetic government, the TNC filmmakers and their supporters finally issued the “Taiwan New Cinema Manifesto” in 1987, criticizing the government, press, and certain film critics.” (Daw-Ming Lee)

The key, characteristic of the Manifesto?

“In the manifesto, the 54 New Taiwanese filmmakers expressed three major concerns. First, they criticized the Taiwanese government for its policies towards filmmaking, claiming that it was more interested in promoting “political propaganda” and “commercial filmmaking” than “cultural activities.” Second, the 54 signers also criticized the mass media for its refusal to treat cinema as an important part of artistic culture. And third, they also attacked Taiwanese film critics, asserting that said critics tended to “support the idea that Taiwanese films should emulate those of Hong Kong and Hollywood.”
– Film Inquiry: A Beginner’s Guide to New Taiwan Cinema

A PRESENT AND FUTURE INDUSTRY
Most of the world knows China through the films of Hong Kong. It is one of the fastest growing industries in the world with its export of film sitting just behind that of the U.S.. These films play internationally, have the necessary budget and funding, and have the benefit of a strong commercial industry backing them. And yet, it is the filmmaking coming out of Taiwan that remains most crucial to the building of the Chinese identity, the same industry that helped build Taiwan and develop it according to its distinct language, culture and story. The problem that the Country still faces is for these films to continue to find the opportunity to influence the mainland with its commentary and representative voice. Without money and the commercial heft of Hong Kong, it needs to operate in relationship with Mainland China, which is a complicated endeavor given censorship, still competing political interests, and their equal desire to find and maintain a degree of independence.

What Taiwan does have that Hong Kong doesn’t though is a recognizable presence at international film festivals. This is something that its creative and artistic voice has allowed to prosper in recent years.

“If we regard Hong Kong cinema as crowd-pleasing entertainment, then Taiwanese films are more art-oriented. Hong Kong cinema focuses on commercialism, while Taiwanese cinema emphasizes ideology or aesthetics.” (Taiwan: A Political History)

Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, and Ang Lee are three distinct Taiwanese arthouse Directors who helped pave some inroads on the international and festival market stage, begging the question of a distinguishing Taiwanese identity. Regarding the future, “the question is not only about whether the Taiwanese film industry should focus its efforts on art films or commercial films, but also about how the Taiwanese film industry has coped with the dramatic rise of the whole Chinese-language film market.” (The Film Industry in Taiwan: a Political economic study).

Building their industry based an intrinsic artistic value and dedication to the craft has allowed Taiwan, despite the censorship rules, to invest quietly and subtly into its filmmakers, whereas Hong Kong has devoted its time to building an industry. Two very different approaches with very different concerns and very different outcomes. It is here that Taiwan’s cinematic identity will likely continue to be defined. Films like the sweeping and epic A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, A CITY OF SADNESS, and THE PUPPETMASTER are definite examples of Taiwanese New Cinema, all award winning films which filtered the particular Taiwanese Manifesto as a local and nationally focused cultural concern. They represent stories and events that place an emphasis on character (and psychological study), Nationalistic concerns (external narratives), and an interior focus (internal narratives). Yang, known for TAIPAI STORY and the exceptional YI YI, (and TERRORIZERS), are examples of the focus these films are able to give to one of Taiwan’s most pressing concerns- urbanization. In particular, my favorite New Taiwan Cinema film, the spiritual epic A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE, is a wonderful and compelling fusion of all these elements. Likewise, for one of the earliest representations and works from the New Wave, Chen Kunhou’s GROWING UP is a great place to see this movement being set in motion, representing a truly patient and touching story of Taiwan through a story that reflects both time and place.

Where ever you start in exploring the Country through film, and it is likely you will begin to explore Taiwan through its New Wave films (which in and of themselves reflect a diversity within their shared focus and characteristics), what is immediately evident is the level of awareness and intelligence present in these films. As a cultured representation of a people defined by persistence, patience and awareness, these films refuse to rush their narratives. They hold a real ability to reflect, but with a past-present-future focus. And above all, they show a spirited refusal to give in to outside pressure, to conform, creating some of the most honest and integral artistic films available. A true inspiration, and an industry that will be exciting to watch develop even further.

Here is my working list of films for my watchlist, some that I have seen and some that I am working through:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-taiwan/

SOURCES
Film in Taiwan by Daw-Ming Lee
https://www.filminquiry.com/beginners-guide-new-taiwanese-cinema/
Berry, Chris and Fei Lu, editors. Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After.
Roy, Denny. Taiwan: A Political History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Tweedie, James. The Age of New Waves: Art Cinema and the Staging of Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Yeh, Emilie Yueh-Yu and Darrell William Davis. Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Yip, June. Envisioning Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation in the Cultural Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Taiwan#:~:text=international%20film%20festivals.-,Early%20cinema%2C%201900%E2%80%931945,the%20era%20of%20Japanese%20rule.
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-269691793/a-brief-history-of-taiwan-s-film-industry
https://taiwaninsight.org/2018/10/31/the-journey-of-taiwan-cinema-from-taiwan-new-cinema-to-post-new-cinema/
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19905493.pdf
file:///C:/Users/jcourtney/Downloads/A_Brief_History_of_Taiwan_Cinema.pdf