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Craig DetweilerCommentator Andy Crouch calls Christians to what he terms “culture making.” He wants us to move away from being consumers and critics of culture toward being active creators of cultural goods, makers of everything from novels and laws to iPads and pea patches. Filmmaker Craig Detweiler embodies this kind of life. While he is a commentator (he has written on the theology of film and video games), an academic (he directs the Center for Entertainment, Media, and Culture at Pepperdine, where he is a professor), and a longtime writer of popular films, he is also emerging as a skillful and sensitive maker of documentaries. His award-winning doc Purple State of Mind draws us into the particulars of the American social landscape through the idiosyncrasies of politics, friendship, and the dance of argument, by bringing together two college roommates whose lives and politics took very different paths. By focusing on this single relationship, the film pursues true dialogue and reconciliation between red and blue Americas who seldom attempt to talk to each other, preferring to satirize and condemn from a safe distance. The filmic voice is playful, honest, inquisitive, and gently persistent—with a dash of good-humored humility. In his newest project, Detweiler turns his sights internationally, to parts of the world where people of different religions maintain a fragile community life together. In a mistrustful and suspicious age, his documentary work is a healthy reminder that believers don’t need to fear the engine of American culture that is Hollywood—that we can not only engage with it, but can contribute to it, and by our participation, shape it.

Some of Detweiler’s work is featured in Image issue 66. Read an excerpt by Detweiler here.

Biography

Craig Detweiler is a filmmaker, writer, and cultural commentator. He directs the Center for Entertainment, Media, and Culture and serves as Associate Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.

Detweiler is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Davidson College and earned an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California’s acclaimed School of Cinema/TV. Craig completed his MDiv and PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Feature films he has written include The Duke (1999) and Extreme Days (2001). As a director, his documentary Williams Syndrome: A Highly Musical Species (1996) won a Cine Golden Eagle and the Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival. His comedic documentaryPurple State of Mind (2008) won Best Spiritual Film at the Breckenridge Festival of Film and the Audience Award at the Tallahassee Film Festival. He also leads a coalition of schools to the Sundance Film Festival for the annual WindRider Forum.

His first book (co-written with Barry Taylor), A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture (2003) was a finalist for the Gold Medallion in Theology/Doctrine. His recent books include Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films in the 21st Century (2008) and A Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture (2008). Craig edited the first book on theology and video games, Halos and Avatars: Playing Video Games with God (2010).

Detweiler’s cultural commentary has been featured on ABC’s Nightline, CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, NPR and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Current Projects
November 2011

Growing up in the South made me curious about the things that divide us. In my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, it was the freeway. At Davidson College, it was railroad tracks. In both places, white folks didn’t live near black folks. Working with Urban Young Life, I walked into housing projects that many avoided. Not because the residents needed my help, but because I desperately needed their perspective on how things worked (or didn’t work!).

My documentary project, Purple State of Mind, explored the religious and cultural gaps that separate Americans. My journey into faith was juxtaposed with my college roommate’s renunciation of his religious roots. I was honored by Image’s invitation to reflect upon our Purple State Roadshow in issue 66. With the 2012 presidential election approaching, I expect the rhetoric to get overheated again; far more heat than light.

The chasm can be just as daunting between nations. The Henry Luce Foundation gave the Brehm Center at Fuller Theological Seminary a grant to bring Christian and Muslim ethnomusicologists together to create “Songs of Peace and Reconciliation.” So my latest project, [un]Common Sounds, documents international conferences in Beirut, Lebanon and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. These are ‘hot spots’ where Christians, Muslims, and others live in close proximity and maintain a fragile balance. What can we learn from scholars and musicians who collaborate despite their differences? [un]Common Sounds finds moments of sonic transcendence amidst divergent peoples.

I also just turned in a book that Westminster John Knox Press will publish in 2012. It is a concise dictionary of theology and pop culture that was edited with my colleagues from Fuller Seminary, Robert K. Johnston and Barry Taylor. The title hasn’t been finalized, but we’re hoping it will include the phrase, “From Ben-Hur to Zombies.”

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The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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