This week, we are excited to premiere our first video essay – Framing the Faith of Ida by Steve Vredenburgh. Video essays seek to smudge the line between the largely verbal world of film criticism and the visual world of cinema. They try to put us in step with the aesthetic of the film instead of forcing the film into the literary aesthetic. The film comes first and stays first, and as such, it takes a filmmaker-scholar with joint eloquence in both cinematic and linguistic tongues to construct an effective video essay. Steve Vredenburgh is one such filmmaker-scholar.
When I first met Steve, he told me about his experience as an editor and his doctoral aspirations. I guessed that video essays might be the best outlet for his particular talents, so I suggested he investigate the form. He responded by making this brilliant video essay on Ida, proving to me once again that the best film critics are filmmakers, because they are fluent in the native language of the medium.
Ida ranked at number five on our community’s list of the best films of 2014. The Arts & Faith Eccumenical Jury ranked it at number two on their list of 2014’s best “Christian” films, in the broadest sense of the term. Ida appears on more critics’, critics society’s, and news outlets’ top ten lists than we have space to mention. The film is nominated for two Academy Awards – Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography. In Steve’s own words, “Ida wrestles with the themes of family, identity, loss, and how to have faith in the world vs the safety of the church. These themes are communicated through the film’s masterful cinematography as much as, if not more than, through the film’s sparse dialogue. The result is a film that is as beautiful as it is profound.”
If you haven’t already seen Ida, and if you care about SPOILERS, you should watch the film before you watch this essay as Steve comments on the entirety of the film including relevant plot points from across its narrative. The film is currently available to stream on a variety of VOD services. If you have seen Ida, we think Steve’s short film will reveal new things about the film to you and inspire you to admire it even more than you probably already do. Enjoy. – Elijah Davidson, Editor