Exploring a Century of Change
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Client Production, Evangelism and Outreach, History
Exploring a Century of Change: Protestant Missions, 1910-2010 is a documentary I produced for the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. In 1910 Protestant Missionary societies gathered in Edinburgh, Scotland to plan for missionary activity in the next century. This is the story of how things turned out and where Protestant missions are headed in the 21st century.
The program features leading scholars such as Brian Stanley, Edith L. Blumhofer, Peter Vethanayagamony, Robert J. Priest, Nelson Jennings and Kathryn T. Long.
Tags: Church, Education, Faith, History, Missions, Tim Frakes Productions, women
Plymouth Rock
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Education, History, Interesting Places, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel
In1620 a ship dubbed the Mayflower arrived along the shores of what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. They came seeking religious freedom and a new life in what was to them, a new world.
Tags: Education, History, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel
Plymouth Rock
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Education, History, Interesting Places, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel
These are a few shots I took while shooting b-roll for People of Faith: Christianity in America.
Tags: Christianity, Church, History, Massachusetts, People of Faith, Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, Tim Frakes Productions, Travel, Video
Colonial Parkway: People of Faith
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under History, Nature, Tim Frakes Productions
The Colonial Parkway is a twenty-three mile scenic roadway stretching from the York River at Yorktown to the James River at Jamestown. It connects Virginia’s historic triangle: Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. Several million travelers a year use this route to enjoy the natural and cultural beauty of Virginia.
I recorded these images for a documentary I am helping to produce for Wheaton College and the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals titled: People of Faith. The six, half hour series looks a Christianity in North America from the Colonial period up through today.
Tags: Education, History, Tim Frakes Productions
Story of the ELCA
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Education, Faith Based Production, History, Interesting People
With the recent, drastic budget shortfalls and staff reductions at my former employer, the ELCA Churchwide office in Chicago, I found myself reviewing a program we did in 2003 titled: The Story of the ELCA. It is difficult to reconcile the enthusiasim illustrated in this documentary with the recent struggles endured by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The video features rare footage and interviews with key leaders from the ELCA’s three predecessor church bodies, the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.
Included in the program are portions of interviews with the Rev. James R. Crumley Jr., bishop of the former LCA; Dr. Dorothy Marple, coordinator of the Transition Team for a New Lutheran Church; the Rev. Rev. Robert J. Marshall, LCA president; the Rev. David W. Preus, president of the former ALC; the late Rev. Jacob A. O. Preus, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS); and the Rev. John H. Tietjen, president of the LCMS Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.
Tags: ELCA, History, Tim Frakes Productions, Video
John and Rose: Looking Back at a Lifetime
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Family History, History, Tim Frakes Productions
This is an interview I did several years ago with two of my aunts, Merc Bruss and Ione Driggs. They share some family history and talk about growing up in the depression in and around Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Tags: Family, History, Tim Frakes Productions, Video
Glory to God Alone: The Life of J.S. Bach
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Europe, History, Music, Travel
This is a documentary I produced while working for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I re-post it here, in honor of J.S. Bach’s birthday! Soli Deo Gloria!
Tags: Classical, Eisenach, Germany, History, J.S.Bach, Leipzig, Music, Weimar
Why We’re Addicted to Disaster Porn
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Disaster, History, Peace and Justice
My friend, photo journalist Paul Jeffrey shared this David Sirota story with me. I post it here as a response to friends and family who ask, “How was Haiti?” Though not a religious article, I think there is some Gospel in here somewhere.
Tim
Why We’re Addicted to Disaster Porn
By David Sirota, AlterNet
Posted on February 2, 2010, Printed on February 3, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145498/
The black t-shirt — so tight, so come-hither. And oh, those safari button-downs — joke-worthy on Eddie Bauer mannequins, but on news correspondents, so … enticing.
America missed these sartorial seductions, pined for their sweet suggestive nothings. And now, finally, a nation of television addicts can thank its disaster pornographers for bringing back the lurid garments — and the lustful voyeurism they evoke.
Yes, thousands of miles from the San Fernando Valley’s seedy studios, the adult entertainment business is alive and panting in Haiti. This year’s luminaries aren’t the industry’s typical muscle-bound mustaches of machismo — they are NBC’s Brian Williams pillow-talking to the camera in his Indiana Jones garb, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta playing doctor and, of course, CNN’s Anderson Cooper in that two-sizes-too-small t-shirt “rarely missing an opportunity to showcase his buff physique,” as The New York Times gushed. They are all the disaster porn stars in the media with visions of Peabodys and Pulitzers dancing in their heads.
And We the Ogling People drink it in.
Like any X-rated content, this smut is all flesh and no substantive plot. The lens flits between body parts and journalists pulling perverse Cronkite-in-Vietnam impressions (at one point, CNN showed Cooper and his t-shirt saving a child). But there is little discussion of how western Hispaniola was a man-made disaster before an earthquake made it a natural one.
Though neighboring the planet’s wealthiest nation, Haiti has long been one of the world’s poorest places. It sports 80 percent unemployment and a GDP smaller than the annual executive bonus fund at a single Wall Street bank. The destitution is tragic — and a reflection, in part, of colonial domination.
For much of the last two centuries, Western powers used embargo threats to force the country’s population of erstwhile slaves to reimburse their former European masters for lost “property.” As Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates recounts, America aided these efforts from the beginning because President Thomas Jefferson feared a successful black republic would “inspire slave insurrections throughout the American South.”
Crushed by this oppression, Haiti was then assaulted in the 1990s by American “free” trade policies that destroyed its agriculture economy and tried to turn the country into the world’s sweatshop.
In recent years, as the menace of Western-backed coups lurked, Haiti has at times been compelled to pay more interest on its debt than it received in foreign aid.
This is the real story of Haiti that the black t-shirts and safari button-downs (and, alas, their viewers) have never cared about. They’ve only noticed the country when a cataclysm provided more telegenic images than the daily death and despair of the island’s pre-earthquake squalor.
Even now, as the casualty count rises, disaster pornographers barely mention the macabre history. They know that doing so would break unspoken rules against holding up a foreign policy mirror to America and against riling the politicians and business interests that contributed to Haiti’s demise.
Rather than reporting on what made Haiti so poor and therefore its infrastructure so susceptible to collapse, we get clips of Haitians momentarily cheering “USA!” as food packages trickle into their devastated capital. Rather than inquiries about how poverty made Haiti so ill-prepared for rescue operations, the disaster pornographers instead obediently follow George W. Bush, who self-servingly says, “You’ve got to deal with the desperation and there ought to be no politicization of that.”
“Politicization” — so that’s the safe-for-TV euphemism they’re using these days, huh? Evidently, it must be avoided — evidently, nothing kills an audience’s heaving passion faster than “politics” or (God forbid) contextualized news.
Anything like that — anything beyond the exploitation of raw disaster porn — well, it might ruin the money shot.
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” was just released this month. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network — both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.
Tags: Haiti
Honoring Veterans
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under History, Spiritual Journey
Here are two short videos I produced this year while working on separate projects for Lutheran Life Communities and the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin (ELCA) Book of Faith Initiative. Both stories reference the everyday heroism, faith, fear and loss experienced by veterans of every generation. Nick Zanini served in Europe during World War II. James Homme served in Korea.
Tags: Faith, History, Tim Frakes Productions, Veterans, Video
Ancient Byblos
Posted by timfrakes | Filed under Culture, Education, History, Interesting Places, Middle East, Travel
While in Lebanon, we visited Byblos, an ancient city just north of Beirut. It is believed by many to be the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It is was also a great place for the IVAP team to get a sense of the historical depth that is woven into the fabric of the Middle East.
Tags: Byblos, History, Lebanon, Middle East, Tim Frakes Productions, Video