The Bishop of Liverpool has called on the Government to review prisoner transfer agreements with other countries. Bishop James Jones raised the case of Steven Willcox, who is in a UK prison serving a 29-year sentence imposed in Thailand following his arrest for possessing 0.8oz (24g) of heroin, amphetamines, marijuana and ecstasy. At question time [...]
Every week, thousands of people up and down the country devote many hours to preparing and leading music for worship, whether as choir directors, organists or music group leaders. The Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) believes that many of them would like to deepen their knowledge and understanding of what they do, and has [...]
Campaigners for peace in the Middle East this week were warned not to demonise Israel, or risk undermining their campaign. A leading opponent of Jewish settlements criticized Western Governments for supporting Palestinian causes without examining their underlying agendas. And he warned that supporting seemingly just issues, such as the return of refugees, could lead to [...]
CENSUS DAY is to be on March 27. King David was famously punished for counting the people of Israel but the British government has been conducting a census every 10 years since 1801. The only year missed was 1941. Filling in the census form is a legal obligation but this year there is a choice [...]
Inside Job (cert. 12A) is a sterling attempt at explaining the banking crisis of 2008, and how it cost US taxpayers $800 billion. Of course, it’s largely ordinary families who have suffered, while the banks’ failed executives walked away with their bonuses and, like Fred Goodwin at RBS, rather generous severance pay. That’s on top [...]
What I Believe Hans Küng Continuum, hb, £11.89 ‘The strongest force shaping politics is not blood or money but ideas,’ The Economist recently claimed in the course of a special supplement devoted to global leaders. The magazine went on to argue that ‘the people who influence government the most are those who generate compelling ideas [...]
URGENT REPAIRS to 153 Grade I and II listed places of worship will go ahead thanks to £15.7million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and English Heritage. The grants were awarded under the organisations’ joint Repair Grants for Places of Worship scheme, which has awarded almost £140 million of grants for more than 1500 projects [...]
This well wrought film with its many awards (first prize) from Cannes, New York, and other important places gives a fine dramatic look at a monastery in Algeria caught in the Algerian revolution, a throw-the-French-out historic event set in the later 1990’s. A true film based on the historic story, and a dramatic rendering of excellence, the language of prayers with the use of introspective reflection on their situation by the monks of the monastery hold a poetic lilt.
Simplicity of a kind in the cinematography added to this clarity of their conflicts about staying in their dangerous and acknowledged life threatening situation. Algerian insurgents would and could kill them all at any time, and though the monks struggled with their feelings about entering into a situation that would end in their martyrdom, this heroic tragedy in the life of a monastery did not evidence melodrama in its acting, or the fear of death and end of their monastic lives with God that played out throughout almost the entire movie. The actors were true to character, intelligently in their skill of acting, and gave a sense of commitment and peace through their performances.
The Algerian war was a founding event in modern Algerian history. It left long-standing scars in both French and Algerian society, and still affects some segments of society in both countries to this day. So says Wikipedia, and it also offers this quotation about that time in French and North African history, the worldly back drop to the quiet life of peace and prayer lived by the monks in their life among Muslim villagers—a long relationship of more than one generation of monks.
The Algerian War, (Arabic: ثورة جزائرية; French: Guerre d’Algérie), was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, terrorism against civilians, use of torture on both sides and counter-terrorism operations by the French Army. The conflict was also a civil war between loyalist Algerian Muslims who believed in a French Algeria and their insurrectionist Algerian counterparts.
This excellent movie that this writer rates with five stars with its well defined and even underplayed, insightful actors who caught the prayer life and rhythm of monastic life so well through the direction of Xavier Beauvois won the Cannes Prize, New York Film Festival Prize and many others. It was not an Oscar choice in the United States so is not on that list for voting.
“The film is inspired by real events, as was reported in this review earlier–the still not entirely explained kidnap and murder of seven monks in Algeria in 1996 – but the narrative leads slowly round to the tragedy, which happens only at the very end, and largely off-screen.
“In a Cistercian monastery in North Africa in the 90s, eight monks live in cordial harmony with the local population.” So writes Jonathan Romney in “Screen Daily.” Since he as a reviewer puts it so well about the director, here is a quotation from his review as displayed on “Screen Daily’s” website: “One-time enfant terrible Xavier Beauvois has long been a respected presence on the French scene, making his name with dramas such as Don’t Forget You’re Going To Die (1995) and the police story Le Petit Lieutenant (2005). With Of Gods and Men, his time for wider recognition has surely come, this thoughtful but urgent piece showing that Beauvois has matured into a masterly director with tight, calm control of his material.”
The Bishop of Egypt and North Africa has offered his condolences to the Catholic Church in North Africa following the murder of a Polish missionary priest in Tunisia. On February 18, Archbishop Mouneer Anis wrote to Archbishop Ghaleb Badr of Algiers offering his prayers and support after he learned of the “tragic death of Fr [...]
By Graham Cray Our Methodist colleagues in the Fresh Expressions initiative have nearly 1,000 fresh expressions of church. This means that almost one in five Methodist churches is involved in encouraging new forms of church for those who are not already members of any church. When the Dartford Bridge area became ripe for redevelopment [...]
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