Does two make a trend? I recently heard back from two festivals that, although the festival screeners liked the characterization and experimentation involved in my short film A WELL-PROVED HELPMATE, they felt the subject matter was all wrong for their festivals. The subject matter in question is folk preaching.
One of these festivals understood the character of Pontain Mitchell to be a Christian whack job, and took the movie as a spoof of Christianity. The other festival thought the movie too much like a sermon and advised me to consider entering only Christian content festivals.
A WELL-PROVED HELPMATE has had some success at festivals. It is not my intention to pout about two recent rejections. In fact, I'm grateful for their honest summaries. I hope this blog entry allows me to reverse what appears to be a tend in some unanticipated judgments about the movie's content.
The movie is about a fictional character named Pontain Mitchell, who is a folk preacher. Pontain shows an uncanny gift for spiritual language. But only when he goes behind a curtain. He even has a different name behind the curtain - - 'Jabez'. Pontain can't explain why he, himself, must be hidden for Jabez's words to come forward. His gift divides him and makes him a peculiar figure in his community.
Folk preachers often appear a villains in movies, standing in the way of tolerance and intellectual progress. Pontain, on the other hand, presents folk preaching as an aspect of intellectual history. His crisis in the movie is brought by a division. This division might read as wackiness or trouble. Indeed, Pontain doesn't seem stable in the polite sense. But he is open to searching himself and studying his traditions as a way to come to finer ideas about living in the world.
Exploring ancient traditions and stories of the world, whether Gilgamesh or Genesis, is important nourishment for the rigors of keeping pace with the acceleration of societies in our own time. Pontain isn't backwards for looking back at traditions and foundational images. He's worried about staying relevant, staying "whole" in the present tense. I think of him rather in the tradition of Peter of Blois, who wrote in the twelfth century:
"However dogs may bark at me, and pigs may grunt. I shall always imitate the writings of the ancients: these shall be my study, nor, while my strength lasts, shall the sun find me idle. We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, by whose grace we see farther than they. Our study of the works of the ancients enables us to give fresh life to their finer ideas, and rescue them from time's oblivion and man's neglect."
You can find an online screener copy of A WELL-RPOVED HELPMATE here and by visiting the Tropic Pictures web site, www.TropicPictures.com.
