Catholic Film Production

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