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Heidi Ewing &
Interview By: Andrea Tuccillo
Documentary filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady channel their insatiable curiosity into their latest film, Jesus Camp. The film documents three children from Evangelical Christian families and their time spent at a North Dakota Evangelical summer camp called “Kids on Fire.” The children are deeply passionate about their faith to an almost extreme devotion, and the camp encourages them to become active members of America’s political future. Jesus Camp explores the ideas of faith and politics and in the process unearths a Christian-American subculture that begs to be discussed. “We were looking for a film that would explore children faith,” says Grady. “We were not necessarily looking for a film about Evangelical Christians per se but really wanted to explore where faith comes from, how one person is faithful, why someone isn’t as devout as somebody else. We found Becky Fischer’s summer camp and found her ministry, befriended her, and decided that her ministry and her vision was a worthwhile film.” The film portrays an extreme Christian view, but the filmmakers made sure to include outside views and opinions to create a well-rounded documentary. “A film needs stakes, a film needs a little bit of compare and contrast and different opinions to drive different points home clearly,” says Ewing. The voice of dissent came in the form of Mike Papantonio, an Air America radio host of a show called “Ring of Fire” who has also been a frequent critic of the fundamentalist movement. “What was appealing about him was that he’s a Christian, he goes to church, he believes in Jesus, he knows the Bible, he’s a pretty devout Christian—and we thought it was important that the voice of dissent was also a Christian so they’re all having the same conversation instead of an atheist from New York City. That would be absolutely irrelevant as a counter-point,” Ewing says. It’s tough to make any film and check your biases at the door, but it was necessary for Ewing and Grady to do so in order to really open themselves up to the experience. The concept of the movie was foreign to them, as neither one grew up in a particularly devout household (Ewing was raised Catholic, Grady was raised Jewish), but after a year of spending time with their subjects they came to truly understand the camp’s mission. “The bottom line is that whenever you’re making a film you’re being invited into someone’s most intimate and personal space and you just have the respect that,” says Grady. “You’re a visitor. You’re visiting their world and in this case we quickly became used to the more explosive things that people are shocked by such as the speaking in tongues, some of the more supernatural aspects of the Christian religion that these people practice and after that we had relationships with them. There was a human face, a human personality behind what they were doing and we just took it from there. We tried to ... |
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