Reel Spirituality
and
The Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching

As part of the Brehm Center's 10th Anniversary Weekend

Are excited to present

Higher Ground

Friday, April 13, 2012
6:30 PM

Travis Auditorium
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, CA

The screening will be followed by a conversation with screenwriter
Carolyn S. Briggs.
 

Carolyn S. Briggs holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas.  Her 2002 memoir This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost (BloomsburyUSA, 2002) has been reissued as Higher Ground: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011). She wrote the screenplay adaptation of the film Higher Ground (Sony Pictures Classics, 2011) and is now writing a screenplay for another author’s memoir and completing a collection of short fiction.  Carolyn is an associate professor of English at Marshalltown Community College in Iowa.

The post-screening discussion will be led by Dr. Mark Labberton, Fuller Seminary's Director of the Ogilvie Institute of Preaching, and newly appointed Ogilvie Chair for Preaching.

An official selection at the Sundance, Tribeca, and Los Angeles Film Festivals, Higher Ground is a harrowing exploration of a life of faith in Christ.

From Reel Spirituality's original review:

Higher Ground depicts the Christian life as it really is - a daily lived commitment to following Christ through good times and bad, hardship and happiness, over the tops of mountains of doubt and through the most tranquil valleys of blessed assurance. Higher Ground is concerned with all the many facets of living - with marriage and divorce and friendship and siblings and parenting and sex and music and art and authority and intelligence and ignorance and Charismatics and Fundamentalists and food and illness and… the list goes on and on and on. In short, Higher Ground is about everything that makes faith difficult and essential for life.

Craig Detweiler (Paste Magazine):

Higher Ground feels like a refreshing and brave attempt to chart a middle ground. Art-house audiences that find evangelicals odd and threatening may find themselves strangely moved. And religious filmgoers may be surprised to enjoy an R-rated film that discusses sexuality and spirituality so frankly. But all Americans desperately need a place and space to discuss the beliefs that move us, shake us and scare us.

Justin Chang (Variety):

To her great credit, Farmiga has made a film that neither believers nor nonbelievers will feel entirely at ease with. The camera doesn't flinch from extended scenes of people preaching, praying and delivering exhortations in everyday conversation, which some may find suffocating and difficult to relate to; still others may object to the way the film elicits laughs at the apparent small-mindedness of its Bible-quoting characters. Yet the director has a real knack for tonal and thematic complexity, and her critique is informed by an essential patience with and respect for the culture she's depicting. Those who know that culture well may be surprised by just how much Farmiga gets right.

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun Times):

Corinne reads widely. She thinks about the Scriptures. She has opinions. She doesn't respond well when an older woman advises her that when she speaks out, it sounds too much like preaching. God forbid a woman should have an opinion. Yet the preachers she comes into contact with are not bad men. The film carefully avoids stereotyping them. It's just that as she grows older, her congregation becomes a group where the others feel more included than she can. They accept. Even the men consider male dominance a duty, not a pleasure.