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The Film
First Reformed, an official selection of the Venice Film Festival and New York Film Festival, is writer-director Paul Schrader’s newest carefully constructed and beautifully crafted film. It follows Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), a solitary, middle-aged parish pastor at a small Dutch Reform church in upstate New York on the cusp of celebrating its 250th anniversary. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the church is now a tourist attraction catering to a dwindling congregation, eclipsed by its nearby parent church, Abundant Life, with its state-of-the-art facilities and 5,000-strong flock. When a pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried) asks Reverend Toller to counsel her husband, a radical environmentalist and chiliast, the clergyman finds himself plunged into his own tormented past, and equally despairing future, until he finds redemption in an act of grandiose violence.
This is a preview screening—First Reformed will be released for wide distribution later this year.
The Lecture
Paul Schrader will give a brief overview of his revised thoughts on his 1972 book Transcendental Style in Film. His lecture will address how a film movement which began with Italian Neorealism (Rossellini) evolved into spiritual style (Bresson), contemplative style (Antonioni), mystical style (Tarkovsky) and morphed into what is now called Slow Cinema. With stops at Bazin and Deleuze along the way.
Participants
Paul Schrader is a screenwriter, director, and film critic whose past credits include Mishima (1985), Raging Bull (1980), American Gigolo (1980), Taxi Driver (1976), and, more recently, Dog Eat Dog (2016) and Dying of the Light (2014). An expanded edition of his book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (1972) will be released in 2018 with new writing on Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr, among others.
Dudley Andrew studied English and Philosophy, then learned filmmaking before getting in on the ground floor just as Film Studies was taking off in the USA. His dissertation on film theorist André Bazin has funded several of his books, and has taken him frequently to France where he wrote two large histories of 1930s culture during the Popular Front era. Andrew taught Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at Iowa for years, directing the dissertations of many of today’s leaders in Film. Coming to Yale in 2000, he chaired Comp Lit from 2009-2013. In the department he works with graduate students primarily on the French literary and philosophical milieu, or on issues that cross between Cinema and Literature (aesthetics, translation, hermeneutics, critical theory).
John Grim teaches at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale Divinity School. John specializes in indigenous traditions, especially Native American religions. Along with Mary Evelyn Tucker, he directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale, which arose from 10 conferences they organized at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. They are series editors of the Harvard volumes from the conferences on Religion and Ecology. With Brian Swimme, Tucker and Grim created a multi-media project titled Journey of the Universe that includes a book (Yale 2011), an Emmy award winning film, a series of Conversations, and online courses.
Mary Evelyn Tucker teaches at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale Divinity School. Mary Evelyn specializes in East Asian religions, especially Confucianism. Along with John Grim, she directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale, which arose from 10 conferences they organized at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. They are series editors of the Harvard volumes from the conferences on Religion and Ecology, have written a number of books including Ecology and Religion (Island Press, 2014), and have edited the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2017). Tucker and Grim edited Thomas Berry’s books and are currently writing his biography for Columbia.
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