The afternoon screenings program at Flickerings 2003 opened with The King Is Alive. The plot of this Dogme 95 film features a group of tourists whose bus breaks down in the African desert who basically choose to spend their life's last breath struggling for understanding and authenticity - for their very humanity - wrestling with a work of art, a play, King Lear. We joked about the similarites of their experience to that of the Cornerstone Festival. "By the end of this week, you'll like like those poor castaways on the screen: sun-burned, dirty, stubbled and / or otherwise bedraggled and worn, stumbling into this room and collapsing on the chairs."

Of course, part of that was no joke. When all was said and done, people did pretty much end up looking like Survivor contestants on a bad day: Cornerstone has a way of doing that to you. But still they came to Flickerings, discussing films each day and night as passionately and thoughtfully as if it was the last thing they'd ever do. The thematic thrust of The King Is Alive has to do with seeking truth in art and self under impossibly adverse conditions — something humans do because it is the human thing to do, according to C. S. Lewis in his famous sermon "Learning In War-Time." It is what we do, others insist, because doing so makes us human. It is certainly what we do, or at least aspire to do, in the mud and rain and humidity and heat at Flickerings.

   Theoretically, we weren't supposed to begin the Flickerings program until Wednesday afternoon of the 2003 Cornerstone Festival, and not start the program the rest of the week until 10 AM. But over the course of finalizing the schedule the last few months it became impossible not to allow the Film Showcase films to overflow the standard program and fill both morning slots. The amazing thing is that the audience always showed up: on time and in surprising number. They showed up early, at a music festival where there is compelling reasons to stay up all night and sleep as late as possible, to watch films they'd never heard of by filmmakers they'd never heard of. The enthusiasm and appetite for new short films among the Cornerstone audience continues to astonish and delight those of us who put together the Showcase each year. Three or four hundred people, eager for discoveries, eager to be stretched, kept showing up every morning and giving their rapt attention, to sometimes experimental and challenging films. Our strongest Showcase program yet featured a variety of films from a spectrum of filmmakers — from students to pros to that brand of addicted amateur we are especially glad to welcome into our fledgling community. (See the complete list of 2003 Showcase Films and filmmakers). We were especially happy to welcome several filmmakers back who have submitted films to previous Flickerings Film Showcase programs. Congratulations to all the participating filmmakers, and to those filmmakers whose works we screened in our 3rd Annual "Best of Flickerings" session.

It was a breakout year for Flickerings on several fronts, especially our Documentary Track. Anybody who didn't already know what it was we've been doing in that metal building off to the side of this already insanely-busy festival, must have concluded it must be something signficant after seeing the line of hundreds of people from the door down the road back to the Exhibition Tent. We had to add a second screening of Bowling for Columbine: you'd have thought we'd had an advance copy of Return of the King for the buzz generated. That so many people at both screenings stayed for nearly an hour afterwards to discuss the films made the astonishing experience even richer. We even managed to fill that old barn for Derrida, a documentary about an extremely difficult (in various senses) French philosopher. When Friday's documentary, Hell House opened with a familiar worship setting and songs, you almost expected people passing by the Flickerings building to wander in thinking it was another Cornerstone worship service. The subject of the film, a "haunted house" for scaring customers into making a Christian commitment, provoked another long and sometimes heated discussion. Whether or not any minds were changed by this film (or Columbine), certainly questions — political, social, theological — were raised and discussed in a way that is definately not the norm in the painfully-familiar Evangelical church culture depicted in the film. It was a liberating and maybe even life-changing experience for many.

The documentary screenings and discussions tended to overflow the schedule into the afternoon seminar periods, but we managed to guide the program into the afternoon seminars each day. We made the segue in one discussion, for example, from the symbolic role of the gun in popular culture, especially as manifested in action films, to the Dogme 95 "Vow of Chastity" rule which forbids using guns for the very reason that they have become mind-numbing cliches. Two "Deep Focus" seminars kept Dogme at the center of the ongoing discussion at Flickerings 2003. In the first, we went through — one by one — the rules created by a group of brash Danish filmmakers who sought to "fast" from certain mainstream movie production values in search of creating something new and authentic. The next day we discussed our own Flickerings Dogma, a list of rules we concocted last year as a way to help the filmmakers sending their work to this film festival to break out of boxes constructed by their own Christian culture. The discussion continued in the afternoon screenings of Dogme 95 films, into the non-Dogme film screenings in the evenings, through a panel discussion and into the Filmakers Only session at night. Clearly this is a movement whose questions affect all thoughtful filmmakers and audiences, and especially those at Flickerings and the discussion will continue into the future. (For more on Dogme at Flickerings 2003, see the separate festival report here.)

   Meanwhile, 2003, our third year of Flickerings, was the year we felt like we finally saw coming together all three elements we set out to develop when we created this venue at Cornerstone. The audience was clearly ready from the start, surprising us with their eager response to the short films and passion for new international and independent films, along with the documentary track. Last year, we made special efforts to draw in the filmmakers, expanding our afternoon workshops and starting the evening Filmmakers Only sessions. This year, the key development at Flickerings was that the critics showed up.

During the Spring, various film critics who participate in the online discussion at the Promontory Arts film discussion board started talking about Cornerstone and Flickerings; a half-dozen of these made actually it to the festival. It seemed a significant moment to be able to introduce several of them to some of our regular filmmakers at Flickerings. Folks like Jeffrey Overstreet of Christianity Today's online Film Forum or J. Robert Parks of the Hyde Park Herald and Phantom Tollbooth, helped raise the level of the post-film discussions and introduced a new and necessary critical approach to the short film programs.

Next year, in fact, we're going to be encouraging that latter development by making our program of film shorts available to select critics before the festival so that we can incorporate the critical discussion into the festival and carry it on afterwards. The critics also joined our ongoing Dogme 95 discussion, hosting a panel discussion on the notion of "Truth" in cinema, which both carried on the discussion, and posed thoughtful criticisms of the Dogme ideal. For those of us who have been a part of the online discussion, it was a delightful time of watching the Promontory board come to life at Flickerings.

How quickly it all came and went! We find ourselves scattered across the continent again, carrying on the conversation online. The important thing is that we are carrying on the conversation. There's no point in trying to cultivate film culture at Cornerstone if we don't connect with film culture beyond Cornerstone. Stay tuned to www.flickerings.com for 2004 entry information, and the ongoing Flickerings conversation as we continue it throughout the year.

We hope to hear your voice in the conversation sometime soon.

See also

Spirit of Dogme '95 Haunts Flickerings '03

Best of Flickerings 2003

Complete list of 2003 Film Showcase Films

Flickerings 2002 Post-Fest Report

Flickerings 2001 Post-Fest Report