The River Film Forum

As 2011 begins, I find myself in an exciting and unique position of being able to help run a program that feels unique, new, and sort of throws out some old conventional ideas of what it means to be a follower of Christ (or in the more common terms, one of them church-going folk). For the last portion of 2010, I helped launch and lead something called The River Film Forum, hosted by The River Church (www.theriversouth.org) in Quincy, Massachusetts. We gather once a month, pop some popcorn, and watch a movie. When the movie's done, we hang out and discuss the film as a group, reacting to what we've just experienced. Some very exciting things have been happening with all of this, and I have some very high hopes for 2011's full year of Film Forums.

This is open to the public, so if you are in the south shore area of Boston, please do no hesitate to contact me. We meet the third Friday of every month. You can look us up on Facebook and keep up with the latest news and information about the movies we're watching and other special events we're planning. The film forum is geared at encouraging open dialogue about life's big questions through the shared experience of watching movies and talking about the ideas and issues brought up in films. This is open to anyone interested, you don't have to be part of our church, or any church. This is about appreciating film and making friends through fun and constructive conversations.

Films we have screened and discussed so far include: The Book of Eli, Bruce Almighty, The Matrix, Dan in Real Life, and The Family Man. We kick off the new year of RFF films on January 21st with Inception, followed in February by The Social Network.

As a film lover, this is a dream come true being able to help share a deep appreciate for cinema with others. As a filmmaker, this is highly educational as every time we have a film forum discussion I learn a lot about how other people watch and think about films. As a Christian, I find it fascinating how profound and real (removed from the realm of esoteric platitudes) our discussions of the films we watch are each time.

Along those lines, I'm tinkering with some ideas for writing about this film forum experience some more and explore how this is all working. Things are slowly developing with that, but only time will tell how that shapes up. In the mean time, we've got our year essentially planned out, and we'll be introducing some exciting new things to the film forum this year, including an exclusive screening of an independent film in March.

If you're curious about what this whole film forum thing entails, I've written a brief explanation on The River Church's website: www.theriversouth.org/classes-programs/river-film-forum.