What Is the Source of Creativity?

This is a great TED presentation by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling book, “Eat, Pray, Love”.

As she considered the daunting task of continuing her writing career in the wake of a smash hit, she began to wonder about our cultural expectations and assumptions about creativity. More importantly, she began to ask about the source of that creativity. Her conclusion is that what our culture decided post-Enlightenment is that creative genius must come solely from within human beings. This idea has also led to the stereotype of the tortured artist, living on the edge of an often self-destructive lifestyle.

Ms. Gilbert rejects that idea as an ideal or something we should settle-for. She argues for reclaiming more of a classical idea of creativity coming from alongside and from outside of a human creator. While she doesn’t come at this conclusion from a Biblical worldview, I really resonate with what she says because I know the True Source of creativity.

Voice of the Spirit from the Amazon

What can we learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters who have discovered the truth about the Enemy God?

What can we learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters who have discovered the truth about the Enemy God? Come learn for yourself at two special screenings of Yai Wanonabälewä: The Enemy God, April 13 in Chicago and April 16 & 17, in Southern California. Click here for more information.

Imagine a true story that addresses the deep issues of life; does the spiritual world exist and how can I know the truth about it? How do we deal with ideas that threaten and change who we are as a community? Of all of the spiritual voices that speak to us, is there One that should be obeyed above all the others? The Enemy God is a film that tells that story in a way that is attracting audiences who would never see a typical Christian film.

In this award-winning motion picture of life and death in the Amazon rainforest, The Enemy God recounts the life of Shake, an extraordinary Yanomamö shaman. His interaction with the spirit world gives us an astonishing insider’s look at what is taking place in the spiritual battle for his people. It exposes the reality and deception of demons in the spirit world and vividly demonstrates how the gospel transforms a culture.

“THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC”

It takes an immense amount of discipline to resist spoon-feeding your audience. And it takes the same discipline to solve story problems by writing only dramatic scenes, not expositional scenes.

I read a post that talks about this topic this week on Go Into The Story, one of my current favorite blogs. Scott Myers collects an amazing variety of great screenwriting tips, scene analysis from famous films, and general wisdom from great screenwriters.

In this post, Scott re-posts a letter from David Mamet (if you don’t know him, you should find his stuff) that was written to his writing team for a television series Mamet was writing a few years ago. In the letter (there is some colorful language – it’s Mamet) he exhorts his writing team to be disciplined to write scenes and dialogue that serve to move the story forward dramatically.

It’s the bane of every writer to have to deal with collaborators (not the word Mamet uses to describe the network executives) who make suggestions. Often the suggestions (or orders) come in form of a request to make the story more clear, fill in blanks, flesh out characters, etc. And, too often, this results in dreaded exposition speeches by characters or the inane dialogue that spells out what the audience probably already knows and would enjoy discovering for themselves. Mamet colorfully outlines his criteria for what needs to happen in a scene for it to be worthy to remain in a script.

Go Into The Story: “THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC”.

Mormons and Film

Mormonism has arguably been the most cinematically engaged religious movement in the history of motion pictures. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members have been involved with filmmaking since the medium’s beginning. The first motion picture to feature Latter-day Saints was the Spanish-American War actuality Salt Lake City Company of Rocky Mountain

I find this a fascinating article from an insider’s perspective. It gives a historical and cultural overview of the use and influence of motion pictures within the LDS world. It would be interesting to me to understand the dynamics and how they are the same and how they differ from mainstream Evangelical Christian filmmaking.

Click here to read the full article on Patheos: Mormons and Film.