The more people I meet the more I realize we are all living with a God-sized hole we long to fill. Without God people tend to self-medicate. Medicine can take many forms: relationships, work, alcohol, to-do-lists…anything. We are created to love God with a hunger to have hope. People desire, perhaps even need to live for something greater. We came as an international mix of 13 as prepared as we could be to make this film. God absolutely met us in our deficits. Along the way we met many wonderful men and women. What surprised me the most was the interest and investment each made in their individual ways into the project.
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| Photograph taken by my friend Pramod |
From the drivers we hired to facilitate our daily needs to go between our lodging and the set to the family living in the place we were filming, each person made contributions. I remember one specific scene when I realized this wasn’t just Create Thailand’s project. This film we were creating belonged to every single one of us: the drivers, the students, the guesthouse staff, the Hindu family we were working with, everyone.
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| Photograph taken by Steve, our awesome leader! |
Deepak was the head of the family. He was tall in stature with a fantastic moustache and his presence commanded respect. We were filming a specific scene where the sickly father-in-law is about to die. We had only the wife, son, daughter and daughter-in-law planned to be in the scene. Deepak advised us, “This scene would be more true if there was extended family present. All the relatives would come and be mourning together.”
In response to his extremely pertinent cultural counsel we asked if the family would mind being a part of that scene. The response was an overwhelming and enthusiastic YES! Not only Deepak and his extended family but also the taxi drivers wanted to have a part in our film! I watched the nervous giggles, the joy and the satisfaction play across their faces that day. This was their film too.
Whenever we got back to the guesthouse the people working there would ask us without fail, “how is the movie coming?” or “How was the movie today??” The family who owned the guesthouse had become a part of the movie.
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| Before filming our friends and translators helped explain what needed to happen. |
One of the actresses in the movie is a beautiful Indian believer who was cast as the mother-in-law. This character is absolutely essential for the film, but she is not a kind or loving. As a result this was challenging for her to play. Our film tells the story of an orphaned young woman who is raised and married off at a young age by her grandparents. Her inability to conceive, the abuses she suffers being a daughter in law and the transformational power of Jesus’ love and healing. Unbeknownst to us until nearing the end of the movie’s filming, we were telling a story very similar to this actress’s. This was the actors’ and actresses’ movie as well.
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| One of the children riding his bicycle where we were filming. |
Learning about directing, costuming, organization, feeding large groups of people, camera operation (and more)—this was only a portion of what we were able to experience. We each had the privilege of allowing our lives to overlap with others. Some were also believers and some were not. This overlap is where other people really get a personal view of what Jesus is like in our lives. The prayer involved in this movie makes this every single prayer partner’s movie as well. Together we are all making with God a film for over 50 million people and each person’s part is essential.
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| This is me with the amazing Hindu family we worked with. My dear friend Alicia took this photograph. |
**this entry was written by me for the School of Frontier Media (SFM) blog page and will reappear there at a later date**