Discovering the Sacred in Film
(On Site)
Thursday evenings 6:30 – 8:30 pm PDT

Sacred is defined as “worthy of religious veneration.” What can we view today as sacred
and what can be said to be sacred in our daily lives? Film is without question the medium of our times. Producer David Putnam (Chariots of Fire, The Mission) once said, “If movies could be what they might be, there’d be no need to go to church.” Four films will be screened, one each week, not for entertainment alone, but as a catalyst to explore a sense of the sacred and its meanings for our lives. Catherine Ann will provide a brief introduction at each screening and facilitate an open dialogue after.

• Oct 6     Mindwalk (Adapted from Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics) starring Liv Ullmann.
• Oct 13  Winter Spring Summer Fall (Korea) – A Buddhist monk and his disciple encounter the outer world.
• Oct 20   The Gods Must Be Crazy (Australia) – an aboriginal perceives God in a coke bottle.
• Oct 27  Enchanted April (UK) a stellar British cast depicts the story of four  women fleeing a dismal London winter to a villa in Italy in a life-changing adventure.

Single session $15, Series $50

 Catherine Ann Jones holds a graduate degree in Depth Psychology and Archetypal Mythology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where she has also taught.  After playing major roles in over 50 plays on and off Broadway, she became disappointed by the lack of good roles for women and wrote a play, On the Edge, about Virginia Woolf and her struggle with madness in a world gone mad, Hitler, and WWII.  The play won a National Endowment for the Arts Award. Eleven of her plays, including Calamity Jane (both play and musical), The Women of Cedar Creek, and Freud’s Oracle, have won multiple awards and are produced both in and out of New York. Her films include The Christmas Wife (Jason Robards and Julie Harris),  Unlikely Angel (Dolly Parton), and the popular TV series, Touched by an Angel. A Fulbright Research Scholar to India studying shamanism, she has taught at The New School University, University of Southern California, and the Esalen and Omega Institutes.  Her books, The Way of Story: the Craft & Soul of Writing, Heal Your Self with Writing, What Story Are You Living, Freud’s Oracle, Fables: Stories from Childhood, Buddha and the Dancing Girl: A Creative Life, and East & West:  Stories of India (2022) are used in many schools, including New York University writing programs.  Based in Ojai, CA, she leads The Way of Story and Heal Yourself with Writing workshops throughout the U.S. Europe, Middle East and Asia. Over 56,000 have subscribed to her six online courses. Her plays, blog, interviews, workshop schedule, keynote talks online courses, personal and writing consultations, are at www.wayofstory.com