Tag: celibacy

The Testament
of Ann Lee

Director – Mona Fastvold – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 130m

****

In the mid-eighteenth century, wishing to preach her unique take on the Christian Gospel, Ann Lee crosses the Atlantic with a small party from from Manchester, England, to establish a Shaker community in America – unlikely religious musical is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20th

This review is written after seeing this film for a second time. On my first viewing, I went in cold, knowing a great deal about both Christian history and the Quakers, but nothing about the Shakers (‘the Shaking Quakers’) around whom the historical side of this film is based. As far as I can tell, the historical portrayals of the Shakers here, and their leader Mother Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried in a career-defining role), are pretty accurate.

This is to leave aside the fact that this is also a musical, the genre in which people suddenly burst into song, and we somehow accept it. In real life, people generally don’t burst into song in the ordinary run of things. And yet, it’s a genre convention we accept, and as a genre the musical has a perfectly respectable history. That said, if you’ve been brought up within any sort of English protestant Christian church tradition, from C of E to house churches, you’ll be familiar with people singing hymns as part of their religious worship.… Read the rest

Tags all sex is abuse, all welcome, Amanda Seyfried, America, and Shelley Hirsch, Ann Lee, authorities, believe, Biblical tableaux, building, building burned down, C of E, celibacy, charismatic house church, childbirth, Christian church tradition, Christian Gospel, Christian history, Christian tradition, Christopher Abbot, church tradition, community, community building, confess sin, conscription, corporal punishment, cross the Atlantic, dance and music, dancer, Daniel Blumberg, David Cale, England, English protestant tradition, factory, female preachers, financial backing, followers, free religious expression, furniture-making, genre, Godliness, hard work and chastity, history, hospital, house churches, house meetings of James and Jane Wardley, Hudson River, imprisonment, Industrial Revolution, infant mortality, jazz voice improviser, Jesus’ second coming, land to settle, Maggie Nichols, Manchester, marriage, marriage is sinful, Methodist, mid-eighteenth century, miscarriage, Mona Fastvold, mortification of the flesh, Mother Ann Lee, music, musical, musician, New York State, Niskayuna, performance, Phil Minton, preach, prison cell, Quakers, raids, religious worship, S&M, Scott Handey, sea voyage, second coming, sex is sinful, sexual sin, Shakers, singer, singing hymns, song, song and dance, soundscape, spiritual longing, Stacy Martin, storm at sea, the Shaking Quakers, The Testament of Ann Lee, Thomasin McKenzie, UK, US, visions, war, witchcraft, worship songs

Features Live Action Movies

Joy Ride

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 3 August 2023
No Comments on Joy Ride
Sticky post

Director – Adele Lim – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 95m

***1/2

A Chinese-American corporate lawyer visiting China to close a business deal for her boss finds herself on a road trip with three friends which turns into a search for her birth mother – raunchy, gross-out comedy is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 4^th

TL;DR: good fun and occasionally hilarious – provided you don’t watch the trailer first.

White Hills, Seattle. Little girl Audrey Sullivan (Lennon Yee), a Chinese adoptee with white parents, hits it off with new girl in town of the same age Lolo Chen (Chloe Pun) when at a local playground, the latter sees off a white racist boy bully on her behalf. Growing up, the pair become inseparable, yet they are very different characters, with Audrey being the school yearbook’s “most likely to succeed” while Lolo is “most likely to be arrested”. Five minutes into the film, Audrey (Ashley Park) is a highly regarded and highly paid corporate lawyer on the verge of being while Lolo (Sherry Cola) is a struggling artist making sex-positive art (i.e. it centres around representations of male and female genitalia). Audrey is letting the impoverished Lolo stay at her upmarket house.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Transgression
(Pagye,
파계)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 August 2020
No Comments on Transgression
(Pagye,
파계)

Director – Kim Ki-young – 1974 – South Korea – 111m

*****

Buddhist, monastic drama. Celibacy confronts carnal desire and a new senior monk must be chosen as the incumbent nears death.

Free to view in the Korean Film Archive as part of

Korean Film Nights Online: Trapped! The Cinema of Confinement

(Friday, July 17th – Thursday, August 27th)

Viewing links at bottom of review

From its opening, a lengthy shot of a mountain hillside slope, this throws anyone unfamiliar with the more complex tenets of Buddhism in at the deep end, peppering voice-over and dialogue with words like ‘yulseong’ (“a monk that learns Buddha’s words”), ‘seonseong’ (“a monk that tries to emulate Buddha’s mind”) and ‘hwadu’ (“a kind of question that leads to seon”). A student disguises himself as a monk to gain admission to a Buddhist temple and see for himself what goes on there.

The temple monks meet to discuss their food problem. There are fifty older monks of more than twenty years’ standing and twenty younger newcomers. One of the old monks Doshim stole and sold some of the temple food. Another old monk tells newcomers that old monks are treated badly at the monastery, suffering deprivation of food, sleep and clothes.… Read the rest