Faith & Film presents Small Things Like These

Set in 1980s Ireland, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong (Murphy) a humble coal merchant and father who discovers disturbing secrets behind the walls of a local convent. As he confronts the suffering ignored by his community, he faces a moral and spiritual crossroads — between silence and compassion, conformity and conscience. What unfolds is a meditation on goodness, grace, and the redemptive power of small acts of truth.

A perfect film for the season to initiate light breaking into the cold places of the world through one person’s act of love and moral courage.

PG-13 (2024), Drama, 1 hr 38 min, directed by Tim Mielants, based on award-winning novel by Claire Keegan

Free Admission. Co-sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and New College Berkeley.

Faith & Film presents Pieces of April

“Pieces of April is a little movie — a tiny one, really. It’s about a Thanksgiving dinner, the prodigal daughter who isn’t very enthusiastic about cooking it, and the family that’s even less fired-up about traveling to visit her and eat it. But this slowly unfolding domestic disaster, set in New York’s Greenwich Village, is funny and bittersweet and as emotionally satisfying as any holiday movie." - Movie Nation

PG-13 (2003), Comedy/drama, 80 min, directed by Peter Hedges

Trailer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4_nmB7PsOo

Free Admission. Co-sponsored by First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and New College Berkeley.

What does it mean to lead like Jesus?

In a world that prizes charisma and control, Formed to Lead invites us to rediscover leadership rooted in humility, prayer, and spiritual depth. Author Jason Jensen draws on decades of experience in ministry and leadership formation to explore how the Holy Spirit shapes leaders from the inside out—through vulnerability, discernment, and faithful dependence on God.

Grounded in Luke 3–4, Formed to Lead offers a fresh vision of leadership that mirrors Jesus’ own journey: resisting the temptations of power, embracing the disciplines of solitude and surrender, and leading from a posture of love. Jensen helps readers discern how divine calling, character formation, and communal accountability weave together in truly Christ-shaped leadership. Sounds pretty timely right?!

This Radix Live event offers a space to reflect and dialogue about how spirituality and leadership intersect in today’s complex world. Together, we’ll consider questions like:
• How do we discern the Spirit’s movement in our leadership and communities?
• How can humility and courage coexist in faithful leadership?
• Why is the Sabbath actually really important?

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

Join the conversation! We're excited to welcome author Liz Charlotte Grant and returning welcome to Dr. Michael Barram. Watch this space in the coming week for more thoughts on this new book and Radix Live discussion.

"In this book, you too have permission to question the sacred without fearing . . . unbelief. Knock loudly. . . . Reject answers that do not admit complication. Seek the resonance at the base of the story. The seeking is the point. Because there, in your wandering, God is." - from Knock at the Sky

Faith & Film presents Tokyo Story

In this quietly powerful masterpiece of world cinema, Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu explores the enduring bonds—and heartbreaking distances—between parents and their grown children. When an elderly couple travels from their rural home to visit their adult children in postwar Tokyo, they are met with indifference and preoccupation. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, offers them genuine kindness and care.

Tokyo Story is a deeply human reflection on aging, duty, gratitude, and the shifting values across generations. With remarkable simplicity and emotional depth, Ozu captures the beauty and sorrow of ordinary life, asking questions that are as spiritual as they are social: How do we honor our parents? What does it mean to love sacrificially? What is lost when tradition gives way to modernity?

A perfect film for quiet contemplation, Tokyo Story invites us to see God's presence in the everyday and to consider how our lives reflect (or resist) the commandment to "honor your father and mother.”

Saturday, October 4, 1–3 PM
at Bethel Community Presbyterian Church, 94578

Common Hymnal is an anything-but-common family of brilliant musicians and songwriters. It is not just their lyrics that set them apart, but the way they approach their craft - as a resilient community of Christ-followers committed to being truthful, authentic, human in the way they pursue their craft. They intentionally seek the higher road, in resistance to the allures of the mainstream music industry, and its many enticements and amenities. In this upcoming gathering, we want to learn about the joys and challenges of taking the road less traveled, and what such a journey makes possible. We are delighted to have some of their core team with us for an afternoon of frank conversation, storytelling, and Q&A, sprinkled with music. Local music leader, S.J. Sanchez, representing the Bay Worship Collective, will join New College Berkeley in holding this conversation with Common Hymnal.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Faith & Film presents Romero

Romero is a compelling and deeply moving film based on the true story of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador. Set during a time of political unrest and violence in the late 1970s, the film follows Romero’s transformation from a quiet, bookish priest into a bold and prophetic voice for the poor and oppressed. As he witnesses growing injustice, government corruption, and brutal repression, Romero is compelled by his faith to speak out—risking his position, his safety, and ultimately his life.This powerful story explores themes of faith, courage, and the call to justice, inviting viewers to consider what it means to follow Christ in the face of suffering and moral crisis. Romero is a timely and inspiring film that challenges us to stand with the marginalized and live out the Gospel in action. Discussion led by Dr. Michael Barram.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online via Zoom

This Radix Live event offers a chance to learn and and dialogue about how we can join a growing, creative, justice-minded conversation on what it means to read scripture missionally in today’s world.

Location: FPC Berkeley

Faith & Film is experimenting with branching into multi-episode tv dramas by planning a discussion evening about the Netflix series, ADOLESCENCE. The series consists of 4 one-hour episodes, which is too much for us to show in an evening, so we are asking people to watch the series in advance at home. This is similar to how many people do book groups.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Online / zoom

A Guide for Compassionate Creatives.

Why should we make art while injustice and suffering wreak havoc? How can we justify making beautiful things? Author Mitali Perkins isn't afraid of hard questions about justice and art. She knows that the creative life can seem selfish. As the daughter of immigrants, she studied toward a career of eradicating poverty and knows the internal voice that challenges: "How dare you retreat to your studio to create?"

Location: FPC Berkeley

Faith & Film presents Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke
One of the great achievements of animation by one of the most revered filmmaker/story tellers of the 20th and 21st Century. The most watched film in the history of Japan when it was released. Incredible hand animation matched by complexity of the profound philosophical narrative of Nature vs human progression, cycle of violence and pursuit of peace, spirituality and the interconnectedness of life, leadership, responsibility and sacrifice.
Often cited as the turning point in filmmaking and mature animation. Join us and bring a friend for an engaging discussion and review after! Discussion led by Sam Choi.

Online / zoom

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD / Online zoom

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD / Online zoom

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Join us for a very special preview screening of The Forge of Friendship, an upcoming documentary film series about the almost 40-year friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. With insights from the filmmakers, our special guests, sections of the new, about-to-be-released film series will be shown. This memorable Faith & Film event opens NCB's "Learning from the Inklings in Wartime" conference. 

Join us for a viewing and discussion of The Zone of Interest (2023), a landmark film exploring moral complicity and apathy. Idyllic familial domesticity is juxtaposed with atrocity. Let’s discuss the psychological and moral spaces where the “zones of interest” allow individuals to justify action or inaction within oppressive systems and the broader societal implications. Bring a friend! Discussion led by Sam Choi.

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD / Online zoom

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Co-sponsored with Peninsula Covenant Church

In this all-day workshop, you will acquire practical handles on how to pray and journal - two spiritual disciplines that complement each other and help us personally, and collectively, to navigate these changing and uncertain times.

Location

Peninsula Covenant Church

Fun, revealing, engrossing - Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swagger and Colonel Sanders - they’re all here. Bring a friend. Discussion led by Sam Choi.
“Just the ticket,” as stated by the London Evening Standard, to understand the evolutions of fiercely religious characters whose initial motives to help the poor and needy become compromised. A big tap into a cultural moment that has persistent reverberations we continue to feel today. A dutiful chronicle of televangelists ascension, power, wealth and decline and a complicated human at the center. 

“A riveting, unleashed and award-worthy performance from Jessica Chastain (Oscar winning role) playing a central character full of tension and contradictions” - Times U.K. 

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD. Online, zoom.

Stepping outside our imbedded frames of reference, widening or narrowing the frames that delimit and define our interpretations of experience, can be an exhilarating experience. We'll do some exercises designed to help us notice frames, reframe and see what happens.

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Instructor: Marilyn McEntyre, PhD. Online, zoom.

Open letters addressed to individuals or groups but published for the general public can be surprisingly effective and persuasive, being both intimate and public, local and global. We'll practice these, and think together about to whom and why we might address an open letter at this time.

These 90-minute workshops will address a different topic each month. Each session will include a brief presentation, prompts, a bit of writing and workshopping time, and suggestions for developing a particular writing practice. Handouts offer guides for cultivating new dimensions of your writing. We will talk about language, faith, form, and what a lively, committed writing life entails. All levels of writing experience are welcomed!

Note: this is a one-time change to our usual rhythm of “First Saturdays” and it is taking place on the second Saturday in October.