Watch: ‘The Song of Bernadette’ and ‘Lourdes’ – An Arts & Faith Top 100 discussion with Kenneth R. Morefield
In which I chat with the editor of a collection of essays about the Arts & Faith Top 100 films about my contribution to the book
For many years, artsandfaith.com was a discussion board hosting a lively online community with a lot of passion for movies and other art forms, among other topics. Many of the regular participants were Christians, most were from Christian backgrounds, and the conversation often had a spiritual slant. It would be hard to overstate the importance of that site and that community in my life. I was a moderator as well as a highly active community member, and lifelong friendships were formed at Arts & Faith.
One notable legacy to come out of that community was a number of film lists, especially several iterations of the Arts & Faith Top 100 Films, sometimes also known as the Arts & Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant films. The Arts & Faith community has also produced a number of Top 25 lists on particular genres or themes (e.g., Top 25 Horror Films, Top 25 Films on Mercy), but the Top 100 was particularly significant as an index of what was of enduring importance to the community.
Today the discussion board is no more, and artsandfaith.com is now a home for the film lists. The current website is owned by Dr. Kenneth R. Morefield, professor of English at Campbell University, a Christian university in North Carolina, and a film writer who blogs at 1morefilmblog.com.
Last year Dr. Morefield edited a book of essays about select Arts & Faith Top 100 films, Film as an Expression of Spirituality: The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (Cambridge Scholars; priced for library purchase—sorry, but ask your local library if they can get it!). My contribution to the book was an essay about two very different movies connected to the Marian apparitions at Lourdes: Henry King’s Golden-Age classic The Song of Bernadette (1946) and Jessica Hausner’s contemporary drama Lourdes (2009), about a woman who experiences a remarkable recovery during a pilgrimage to Lourdes. My essay is called “Faith, Reason, and Interpretation: Belief and Doubt in The Song of Bernadette and Lourdes.”
I’m very pleased with the essay, which I’ve called one of the five works of film writing I’m proudest of. (It is also significantly about religious experience, or religious interpretations of experience.) Most recently I called it that in this video chat with Dr. Morefield, in which we talk about why I chose these two movies and how I approached the topic, along with how my Catholic faith affects my writing, what “Arts & Faith” means to me, and how the latest edition of the Top 100 list compares to earlier iterations. I hope you enjoy our discussion!