In East Wyndam, Massachusetts, the enviable lives of young married couples intersect in the playgrounds, community pools, and streets of their small town in hidden and potentially dangerous ways. Sarah (Winslet) has a PhD in English literature and is still coming to terms with living in the suburbs and raising children. She hangs out with, but does not connect to, the other suburban moms (women who can declare a spa treatment “an intense spiritual experience”) and views her shallow neighbors as sociological specimens instead of peers.

Those moms, in turn, are more interested in Brad (Wilson), a stay-at-home dad and former athlete whom they refer to as “the Prom King”. Brad, married to Kathy (Connelly), a striking PBS documentary filmmaker, is unenthusiastically anticipating taking the bar exam for the third time. Partly out of intrigue, and partly just to shake up her neighborhood, Sarah begins a flirtation with Brad that unexpectedly leads to steamy sexual trysts during their children’s “nap time”.

The genuine peccadilloes happening in their neighborhood remain largely unnoticed by the community members more focused on the imagined deeds of a sexual predator who has been released from prison and now lives nearby with his mother. As the story unravels, so do the lives of these reckless characters, only to slowly intertwine again. Even Brad’s wife finds herself in a book club with Sarah, her husband’s secret lover, who feels compelled to defend the title character of Madame Bovary.

Strong performances from all the actors, crisp cinematography, and sure-handed direction create an involving and eccentric tale. Little Children is an intriguing study of morality, small town paranoia, and the hunger for passion and meaning in uncontrolled lives.

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Terry Lindvall’s interactive presentation looks at the energy and spectacle of religious fervor in African-American church life as portrayed in film. Less of a lecture and more of a dialogue, Dr. Lindvall (C. S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan College) will present film clips while fielding questions from and interacting with the audience. How do these films tease out the particular practices of various Church traditions? How do they capture both the practice of true Christian faith and its hypocritical shadows in the communities of saints who are also sinners? How do these films stereotype religious rituals and embalm them in the understanding of audiences? Where do these films fail to represent vital aspects of various religious believers?

Stylistic moments of excess, passion, justice, and music lead to a rich portrayal of the abundant expression of African-American Christianity throughout film history. From King Vidor’s first all-black melodrama, Hallelujah (1931), through Tyler Perry’s hilarious but devout Medea series (Diary of a Mad Housewife, 2005), Dr. Lindvall leads us on a tour through the charismatic black spirituality of the “invisible Christianity” as portrayed on the silver screen.

Terry Lindvall, a great scholar of silent comedies, animated films, and religious cinema, has long been one of the VFF’s most popular and entertaining speakers. As C.S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan College, Dr. Lindvall is uniquely qualified to offer shrewd analysis of the treatment of Christianity in film and the interaction of film and religion generally. He may be best known for his studies of humor in both film and religion, and for his own lively sense of humor in his books and lectures.

Hollywood, Teach Us to Pray examines how Hollywood teaches the Cinematic Arts to fold hands and pray. Dr. Lindvall’s clip lecture provides both an overview of the portrayals of this sacred ritual as well as a romp through some favorite and obscure films that illustrate what Hollywood filmmakers have seen as both pious and hypocritical practices of a segment of their audience that they don’t completely understand. This interactive presentation encompasses a broad visual history of images of prayer in over 40 films, from the silent classics of Chaplin, Keaton, Pickford and Fairbanks to Bride of Frankenstein, Nightmare on Elm Street, Cold Mountain, and Million Dollar Baby. Cinematic representations of prayer, in drama, comedies, westerns, and horror films, have constructed their own ways and words of praying to a culture given to prayer.

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