The
Responsibilities of a Catholic Film Maker
The
Catholic Church throughout the centuries has always employed the most effective
forms of communication to proclaim the gospel. We built beautiful cathedrals
and churches, for which the greatest artists were commissioned to produce
exquisite art, and which together with sublime chant and music gave glory to
God. All this holy art was not just to decorate and aid worship but also to
teach the faith and inspire the people. At the very centre of all this Catholic
art was and is of course the Mass. I am
not suggesting that the Mass is a work of art in the normal sense of the word;
however, everything a Catholic artist does and makes should ultimately be
directed towards the Mass.
It
is perhaps a pity that today the Church does not make better use of film and
TV. The Church seems to have left the public sphere in the hands of the secular
mainstream media and to our detriment, for Hollywood and the major broadcasters
have little time for the gospel and the Catholic Church. And when they do it's
usually to paint a negative picture, not just about
the Church's teachings on family values and Christian morality, but also about
Church history, particularly subjects like the Crusades, the Inquisition and
the "Reformation". EWTN, of course, do a great job to redress
the balance, with six international channels broadcasting all over the world in
English, Spanish and German. For them I
have made several mini-series, including The
Crusades 2014 and The Inquisition,
2016 with "The
Reformation" being the project I am
working on at the moment.
"The Reformation" will be the
third in the "Black Legend" trilogy. The term "Black
Legend" was first coined by Spanish Catholics of the 16th century to
describe northern Protestant propaganda demonizing Spain during the Reformation
period, and using the printing press to create the Myth of the Inquisition.
Today the media continues to misrepresent these subjects, for reasons which
have little to do with actual events and more to do with secular issues.
I believe it is
important that Catholic filmmakers get involved, to dispel the myths, and to
make good Catholic films that evangelise and proclaim beautiful truths of the
Catholic faith; to give faithful Catholics a lift, a sort of Catholic feel good
factor. Therefore a Catholic filmmaker has extra responsibilities, first of all
to God and to His Church of course, but it is also important that the films he
produces are inspiring to the faithful.
We try to use as
many ways as possible to add production value. This means that we need to
double up in our disciplines. It can
take a little longer to achieve the quality we seek, a quality that at least
equals that of similar films in the secular world. A lot of people give their
time voluntarily and many actors, crew members and location owners will give us
a special rate. Therefore, we can produce a film that looks as if it costs four
times more than it actually did.
Sometimes,
however, in our enthusiasm to emulate the quality and production values of the
secular media, and given the digital box of tricks we have at our disposal, we
can perhaps go too far. For example during the making of EWTN's The Message of Fatima, I was presented
with a troop of actors who were to play the damned suffering in hell, from the
vision shown to the Little Shepherds by Our Lady in 1917. At rehearsals I
wondered how to get them in the mood to play this difficult scene. As we had
seven actors I thought of the seven deadly sins and gave each actor a deadly
sin and encouraged them to personify it. It worked! However, by the time we
added special effects and digital fire in post-production we had something that
was truly horrific.
 |
| A clip from EWTN's Hell cut scene from the Message of Fatima |
In our Inquisition docudrama we did show a
witch burning, just a short clip and I had no complaints, perhaps this was
because I was making the important point that the witch burning craze happened
mostly in Protestant counties. In the Catholic world the Inquisitors were
highly trained theologians if someone accused a woman of flying or sleeping
with the devil they became sceptical and would throw the case out. The Catholic
Church actually put the Inquisition in place to save lives to act as a buffer
between the accused and the fires which were under the control of the secular
authorities. Let's hope the modern theologians are equally as good at saving
people from the fires?
Another difficult
scene to depict in The Message of Fatima
was the Third Part of the Secret. There is much controversy and EWTN left it up
to me on how to handle it, I did mention there were various theories and
versions of the secret doing the rounds. However, when it came to dramatising I
used the official version released by the Vatican with the shooting of the pope
and people at the top of a hill near a cross. We had members from congregations
of a couple of churches together with professional actors and specialist
armourers who regularly act in film battle scenes, firing blanks through real
AK47s. This martyrdom scene seems to resonate with what Christians are
experiencing in many parts of the world today. It is out of respect for them
that I wanted to make this as explicit as possible with a nun and the pope
being machine gunned at close quarters, as a wake-up call to Catholics in the
complacent West. But again, by the time we added the digital squibs (blood) in
post-production the scenes were too strong for broadcast, and like some of the
hell scenes had to be cut.
 |
| 3rd part of the Secret, nun execution scene cut from series |
I think that
Catholic artists of the past would today be working in film and television. However,
I wonder would Caravaggio have managed to enact his gory beheading of St John
the Baptist painting, (now in St John's Co-Cathedral Malta) as a TV scene? I think not, and this might suggest that previous
generations of Catholics had a different attitude towards depiction of violence
against holy people
The final
broadcast version does contain the hell and martyrdom scenes but they are much
shorter and there are no squibs! EWTN have releasing DVDs of the series , and a CD of the original soundtrack,
specially composed and recorded by our composer Adam Tucker and sung by the Canons and
choirs of The Dome of Home. please click here to order from EWTN The Message of Fatima - The Collection - All eight Episodes or Each episode separately.
Stefano Mazzeo,
Independent director/screenwriter for EWTN
