Well that was a success! We had around 130 people at the screening of JL Aronson’s ‘Danielson: A Family Movie’, and the crowd seemed to be very attentive. Thank you JL Aronson for letting us put on your film! Ping* worked very hard on it, so it was great to see a good turnout. The picture on the right shows us setting up, when the film was rolling it was too dark to take a picture, but it gives an idea of the interior.
Immediately after the screening the audience were descended upon by a team of biscuit-givers, they were gingerbread nurses, of both genders {and including children}, made by some ladies at the church. One person, upon being offered one, remarked: “How cool!”, which was my feeling exactly.
Most of the audience were people we’d never met before, music fans keen to learn a bit more about the Danielson Famile and Sufjan Stevens. The film also raised a lot of interesting questions for the artists and musicians there to think about, especially those of us who are Christians. What difference does the religious belief of our audience make to how we percieve their approval of our work? What role does the Holy Spirit play in our daily making of things, or prayer? It showed the importance of doing something, not just talking about what might be possible. I probably spent too much time working on how our present myself in the past; on image rather than content or sincerity.
Quite a lot of people in the film said they liked the music and what inspired it was not important to them. That it was ok for people to be moved by drugs or Jesus, the audience could respond how they liked, so it is okay. I understand where they were coming from, but in a later conversation my friend Mike and I tried substituting the name Jesus in those sentences for the name Hitler, which made it an alarming point of view. “Yeah, we love the uniforms guys, and your music is so organised.” As an artist I’m sure the result depends on where it comes from. The Nazis disfigured Europe because their inspiration was rotten at the core.
