Every year there is a terrific lineup of summer courses at Regent College, in Vancouver, British Columbia. There may be no better place in North America to find inspiration and education for Christian culture making.
This coming year Week 5 (27–31 July 2009) is especially rich, including Michael Ward, author of the extraordinary book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, and Calvin College’s Quentin Schultze. The erudite and wide-ranging theologian John Stackhouse will be teaching a course called “The Ethics of Filmmaking and Other Media” with producer Ralph Winter (X-MEN, et multa cetera). “It will cover how money, sex, power, and ideology affect commercial filmmaking,” John writes on his blog, “with particular reference to Hollywood but to other other film centres (such as Vancouver itself) and, indeed, to other media as well.” If you’re an aspiring filmmaker, I suspect it will be well worth the trip.
In a sign of the embarrassment of riches available these days, the very same week I will be in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at IMAGE magazine’s incomparable Glen Workshop, teaching a week-long seminar on “Culture Making: Meaning in the Material World.” Other faculty include Makoto Fujimura, Lauren Winner, Barry Moser, and Over the Rhine. Wow. I’ll post more information when it’s available. Whether it’s Vancouver or Santa Fe, maybe a summer course registration should be on your Christmas wishlist this year.