New Year's Greetings and Links
On the year ahead, and the year that was.
Happy New Year and a blessed Christmastide to all.
As we begin a new year - indeed, a jubilee year in the Catholic Church - and continue to celebrate these precious days of Christmas, I’d like to kick off 2025 here at The Catholic Filmmaker with a couple of notes about the coming year and some links of interest. Let’s get to it.
Some Important Anniversaries…
2025 is already shaping up to be a year of extremely significant anniversaries, especially with regard to the arts. With birthdays alone, we can look forward to celebrations of Palestrina’s 500th, Michelangelo’s 550th, Jane Austen’s 250th, and Flannery O’Connor’s 100th.
This year, we will also celebrate 130 years of the existence of the motion picture. While a decennial anniversary may not be as exciting as one measured in centuries, it is still a nice round number offering a perfect excuse to reflect with gratitude on the extraordinary meaning of this still-young medium.
In 2025 there are two noteworthy anniversaries to do with the Catholic Church’s engagement with cinema, which I can’t help but see as particularly fortuitous in coinciding with our first year of publication. They are:
The 70th anniversary of Pius XII’s address The Ideal Film (delivered in two sessions in June and October of 1955).
The 30th anniversary of “Some Important Films” AKA the Vatican Film List, issued in 1995 on the 100th anniversary of the birth of the motion picture.
The Ideal Film is an exhortation to filmmakers on the principles of “the ideal film,” wherein the pope paints a picture of the extraordinary possibilities for the cinema to nourish the human person. In doing so, he reminds us not only of our responsibilities, but also of the great potential which lies in this medium we’ve come to love. It is a profoundly philosophical work, being interested in the nature of cinema as a medium, and by far the most informed and detailed exposition of the artistic complexities of filmmaking that we find in the magisterium. It is high time that we pull it out of its obscurity and study it in depth.
The Vatican Film List likely needs little introduction to our readers, given that it has benefited from a surprising resurgence of interest in the English-speaking Catholic world over the last half-decade or more. This renewal provides all the more reason to celebrate not only the list itself, but the occasion of its formation thirty years ago, which represented a return of sorts to dealing with cinema on its own unique terms as a medium, rather than only as one more form of modern communications, which usually lumped cinema in with television, radio, and print journalism.
Between them, these documents speak to the whole range of activity involved in filmmaking, from all that is involved in making (in both practical and speculative senses) to all that is involved with seeing, with receiving, and the necessary work of celebrating, preserving, and sharing works which are truly good. As we embark on our mission here at The Catholic Filmmaker to explore the many dimensions of the meaning of cinema, I take great encouragement from this dual anniversary as a signal grace cheering us on.
Catching Some Breath
In the weeks since this journal launched, I have been most grateful for the words of encouragement and enthusiasm which many of you have shared with me. I kept them close during a very busy December in which my rather idealistic plan to post the rest of the Paradoxes essay was unfortunately sidelined due to other obligations (the fruits of which I look forward to sharing with you when the time comes).
That said, while it is still very early days, and this is obviously a slow moving affair, as long as we get where we need to go, I’m not going to worry too much about how quickly we get there. The longevity of this project is not as important as its quality. If The Catholic Filmmaker lasts only one year while still making its most important contributions to the larger discourse, I’ll be very happy with that outcome. If God wills that it last longer and continue to offer something worthwhile, so be it.
So, what can you expect in the near future? For the rest of this month, I’ll be focusing on finishing Paradoxes of the Catholic Filmmaker. After that, we will begin our core exploration into the question of the identity of the Catholic filmmaker, a quest which will take at least the first half of this year to complete. Alongside that effort, we’ll begin rolling out contributor essays. And beyond that, plans for a podcast are afoot.
Allow me to make one request: if you see any potential in this endeavour, please pray for its success and for me as its principal steward. I will say more in the future about what practical resources will be needed for The Catholic Filmmaker to carry out its mission going forward, but while we’re still getting our sea legs, prayer must be our first and last recourse, as always. Thank you!
Links of Note
We’ll conclude with some news and links from various parts of the Catholic film world.
Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard (2024)
Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard (2024) was released online on Christmas Day. Directed by Sam Sorich (8Beats Anthology) and produced by Trevor Cribben Merrill, it offers a feature-length documentary profile of the Catholic thinker René Girard, whose theory of mimetic desire is having a major breakout moment in mainstream American intellectual culture.
Sam has been working on this film for many years, and it is surely gratifying to see that long process conclude at a moment when a large audience is hungry and ready to learn more about this intellectual giant. Congrats to Sam, Trevor, and team on their achievement!
Catholic Filmmakers at the Notre Dame Fall Conference
Ever Ancient, Ever New: On Catholic Imagination, the recent Fall Conference hosted by the deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame (in collaboration with the biennial Catholic Imagination Conference) included several film-related panels and events of note.
Making Films with a Catholic Imagination was a terrific, lively panel featuring directors Tim Reckart, Elizabeth Mirzaei, and Sean Schiavolin in conversation with moderator Lauren Spohn about their work, their journeys in filmmaking, and some of the larger questions about making films as Catholics. Not to be missed.
Training our eyes on the continued significance of the Vatican Film List, 30 Years of the Vatican Film List: Catholic Cinema’s Past and Future featured papers from Thomas Mirus (Catholic Culture), Andrew Petiprin (Spe Salvi Institute), and myself. Thomas gave a wonderfully comprehensive introduction to the list as a whole, I spoke about the concept of the auteur - the director as principal author of a film - and its importance for theorizing the filmmaker, and Andrew helpfully highlighted the continuing importance of European cinema in the canon of spiritually significant films. Thanks to our chair, John O’Callaghan, for steering us along.
The Philosophy of Drama panel included remarks from the legendary Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi, who also screened his film The Perfect Number (2022) during the conference. Mr. Zanussi also gave generously of his time during the conference to meet with the younger filmmakers in attendance.
Finally, I cannot recommend more emphatically that you make time for Dana Gioia’s opening keynote, Becoming a Catholic Writer, the unassuming title of which hides a profoundly moving, wise, and humorous exhortation to Catholic artists of all disciplines. There is much hard-won wisdom here to receive, wherever you are on your own path.
These videos are, of course, barely a handful out of dozens of fascinating talks and panels, all of which you can find on the de Nicola Center’s Youtube page.
In my view, this conference signalled a breakthrough in the quest to bring filmmakers into conversation with the wider renaissance of Catholic arts and letters unfolding across North America. As a participant, I am immensely grateful to Dr. Jenny Martin, Justin Petrisek, and the whole team at the deNicola Center not only for hosting such a rich and expansive event, but for their particular care in facilitating special encounters throughout the conference.
Finally…
Save the Date: Arthouse2B, a New York-based Catholic arts organization, has announced their third annual artists’ retreat for May 2025. More details here.
Tim Reckart was recently interviewed about his career and his new animation studio, Sycamore Studios, by the 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See podcast. Every time Tim gets a mic, it’s a rollicking time.
Anthony D’Ambrosio’s Triumph of the Heart, a feature-length depiction of the final hours of St. Maximilian Kolbe, is nearing completion. Can’t wait to see this.
Over at Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast, I joined Thomas Mirus and James Majewski to discuss The Tree of Life (2011), part of our ongoing series on Terrence Malick.
The Mass of the Ages team recently announced several new projects. Most intriguing: Godbread, a new feature-length dramatic film on the role of the Eucharist in the lives of four saints. More here.
In a blockbuster piece for n+1, Will Tavlin charts the rise and fall of the Netflix Original.
Ok, that about does it for this one! God bless, and see you soon.