A Conversation with Ron Austin
By Interview Issue 93
In the conversation around faith and film, Ron Austin is an elder statesman. He has worked a lifetime in the entertainment industry, and his essays and books, including In a New Light: Spirituality and Media Arts, have influenced generations of filmmakers (much of his writing is also on his website). His seminal essay “The Spiritual…
Read MoreAdaptation
By Essay Issue 93
I’M AT A LAKE IN WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia. At least I think it’s a lake. It could be a sound, or an inlet, or a bay. In any case, it’s a body of water, and with the evergreens and sizable rocks lining the shore and covering the smaller land masses across from us, against…
Read MoreThe Spiritual Frontiers of Film
By Essay Issue 93
An Introduction by Guest Editor Scott Teems The first issue of Image I read was Issue 31, in the summer of 2001; it was the first in a subscription gifted me by the Act One screenwriting program in Los Angeles, which I had just completed. Initially, I was intimidated by the journal’s focus on fine…
Read MoreThe Many-Voiced God
By Essay Issue 93
THE FAMILY-ROOM TELEVISION came to us through fire and smoke like in the old miracles. It was the mid-aughts, and my father was working at a building restoration company, which is one way to say he waded through disaster for a living. Fire, smoke, water—the words emblazoned on the side of his car read like…
Read MoreLove Letters
By Essay Issue 93
Then it enters the upstairs room, to rest beside my grandmother, a Korean War widow who sold her home and bid farewell to clan and country, arriving in Arkansas to raise two children while their parents worked, who surrendered her strength in the last days of 1988 to a second stroke, but not before teaching me how to read a love letter.
Read MoreA Conversation with Rodrigo García
By Interview Issue 93
Fathers & Sons, Divine & Human Writer-director Rodrigo García makes film and television about human connection, or the lack thereof. The movie Mother and Child (2009), episodes of his shows In Treatment (2008–10) and Carnivàle (2003–05), and others reflect on the question of how to find love, give it, and figure out what we’re really…
Read MoreA Conversation with Mira Nair
By Interview Issue 93
Mira Nair describes herself as “an Indian filmmaker at home in the world.” Odisha born, Harvard educated, and living in Uganda, she brings a vibrant multiculturalist sensibility to exuberant, humane, and honest tales of people trying to get along in a world where joy and struggle meet by the minute. Best known for her films…
Read MoreTo the Wonder
By Essay Issue 93
Terrence Malick (2012) THE FILMS OF TARENCE MALICK, or at least his most recent ones, are perhaps more admired than loved. I’ve struggled through the longueurs of late Malick, but at the same time I’m aware that my brain has been conditioned by Hollywood conventions. Malick takes running leaps off the high dive and sometimes…
Read MoreSullivan’s Travels
By Essay Issue 93
Preston Sturges (1941) ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT 2016, a truly punishing year, I sat in my brother’s living room. I was house- and dog-sitting and most importantly keeping Christmas with our elderly mom, who otherwise would have been alone with her nurse. My husband and I sat in front of a dying fire, dogs in sleepy…
Read MoreMillions
By Essay Issue 93
Danny Boyle (2004) IF FILMS CAN INSPIRE US to live better, you’d think that for people of faith, the most inspiring movies would be Christmas movies. Oh, my child, if only it were so. There’s The Nativity Story, but there’s also Kirk Cameron Saves Christmas (yes, that happened). I used to love It’s a Wonderful…
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