Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 3934 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| FAITH IN THE CITY: ACTS OF WORSHIP | 2009 | 2009-01-01 |
|
Details
Original Format: MiniDV Colour: Colour Sound: Sound Duration: 8 mins 43 secs Credits: 'Thanks to all the organisations and individuals that participated in this project' 'Thanks also to Leeds Faith Forum and Concord' 'Leeds City Council' Yorkshire Film Archive Renaissance' 'Yorkshire 2009' 'mojomedia' Subject: ARCHITECTURE CELEBRATIONS / CEREMONIES RELIGION |
| Summary Faith in the City is a collection of seven films make through the Renaissance Partnership Initiative to create a contemporary filmed history representing and celebrating cultural diversity specifically focusing on five different faiths and their communities in Leeds. Made in collaboration with Leeds Museums, Mojo Media, and the Yorkshire Film Archi ... |
|
Description
Faith in the City is a collection of seven films make through the Renaissance Partnership Initiative to create a contemporary filmed history representing and celebrating cultural diversity specifically focusing on five different faiths and their communities in Leeds. Made in collaboration with Leeds Museums, Mojo Media, and the Yorkshire Film Archive, Acts of Worship focuses on the way in which people practice their faith during festival time as well as within their daily lives.
'New...
Faith in the City is a collection of seven films make through the Renaissance Partnership Initiative to create a contemporary filmed history representing and celebrating cultural diversity specifically focusing on five different faiths and their communities in Leeds. Made in collaboration with Leeds Museums, Mojo Media, and the Yorkshire Film Archive, Acts of Worship focuses on the way in which people practice their faith during festival time as well as within their daily lives.
'New Testament Church of God'
Inside the Pentecostal Church the congregation is singing a spiritual hymn, or gospel, clapping and dancing to the rhythm of the music. Someone plays the organ and others have microphones or are waving flags. The congregation is a mix of all age groups, and there is one elderly lady who is banging a tambourine. A young band made up of members playing drums, guitar and electric organ, play the music for the service. One of the younger members explains the meaning of religion in his life, especially its importance in bringing people together.
'United Hebrew Congregation Synagogue'
A small group of elderly members of the congregation have gathered together inside the Sukkah, or wooden hut, in the grounds of the Synagogue. It is the festival of Sukkot, the celebration of the tabernacle. The Rabbi Daniel Levi explains the meaning of the festival in relation to the years in the wilderness, the Babylonian exile. The discussion group begins by shaking the four species and reciting a prayer. The wooden hut symbolises the lack of permanent accommodation at that time, and the ceiling of the hut has items of fruit hanging from it. The ceremony is shown being performed.
A woman enters the Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha Sikh temple, a Gurdwara, in Leeds. At the top of the building it says, 'Ringtons Ltd.'. Inside three elders are worshipping. Harbans Singh Sagoo explains that every Gurdwara has a flag mast and flag, a Nishan Sahib, covered traditionally in an orange cloth. This signifies that this is a place where one can come for food and rest. The flag mast can be seen on top of the Gurdwara, whilst below a group of worshippers are chanting. He then explains the ritual of the flag post when twice a year the mast is taken down and re-covered. It is covered in yoghurt, dried, covered with a fresh orange cloth and re-raised with the flag. There is a round metallic figure with a point on top, and five elder members of the community are responsible for raising the pole. Other members of the community queue to walk past and stroke the flag mast.
The final scene features a Buddhist temple. It is just a nearly bare room where someone strikes a bowl which rings out. There are four people who recite a mantra. They stand with clasped hands in front of the Buddhist shrine which is lit with small lights. One of the Buddhists, Uddyotani, explains some of the meditations and how they work to help the individual to be aware of each moment, especially in using the breath. The group of Buddhists then sit or kneel in front of the shrine with a statue of the Buddha. Some of them close their eyes while meditating. She explains how the meditation makes one aware of one's emotions and allows for things in the mind to become clearer. It creates the conditions for insight to arise.
'Thanks to all the organisations and individuals that participated in this project'
'Thanks also to Leeds Faith Forum and Concord'
'Leeds City Council' Yorkshire Film Archive Renaissance' 'Yorkshire 2009' 'mojomedia'
Context
This is one of six films made for the project Renaissance Yorkshire. All the films were made by Ed Torsney of Mojo Films. Renaissance Yorkshire is one of several regional museum hubs, consisting of the museum services of Bradford, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and York. The Renaissance project is an initiative funded by Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) to regenerate the nation’s museums. It incorporates a whole range of different projects of which the films are just one. With Renaissance...
This is one of six films made for the project Renaissance Yorkshire. All the films were made by Ed Torsney of Mojo Films. Renaissance Yorkshire is one of several regional museum hubs, consisting of the museum services of Bradford, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and York. The Renaissance project is an initiative funded by Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) to regenerate the nation’s museums. It incorporates a whole range of different projects of which the films are just one. With Renaissance Yorkshire the Yorkshire Film Archive got together with Leeds and Bradford Museums to commission these films.
The films were explicitly designed to take a snapshot of Yorkshire at a moment in time: films that can be archived and used as a resource for future generations to discover aspects of how we live today. This film, together with Steps in Time and A Greener City, were made as a collaboration between Leeds and the YFA; and My World My Things, My World My Work and My World My Sport were made as a collaboration between Bradford and the YFA. Each of these films are in turn made up of six or more shorter films, making a total of 52 films in all. The Faith in the City films also include: ‘Promo’, Festivals and Events’, ‘Afterlife’, ‘Places of Worship’, ‘Community’ and ‘Spirit’. All the films were made over a two year period, with Ed the sole filmmaker. The Leeds films were produced by Gabrielle Hamilton and Binny Baker, doing the behind the scenes production work: finding the people, places and so on. Ed filmed in 16:9 in stereo using just the one camera. The three Leeds films were the central part of the Museum's community engagement programme – through the Renaissance Yorkshire Museums Hub – which helped Leeds City Museum win the "making a difference in Yorkshire and Humber" award in 2009. This award, for ‘Building Cultural Spaces,’ recognises a significant impact through cultural activities. As the Leeds City website puts it: ‘Working in Partnership with the Yorkshire Film Archive the Museum worked with different local groups to create a series of themed film exhibitions in the arena that document contemporary life in Leeds and provide a voice for local people.’ The work of different religions and churches in helping to foster local communities can be seen in a number of films on YFA Online. For example, the films of Charles Chislett show the work of the Anglican Church in New Lives for Old - St George’s Crypt (1951); and Sikh Temple Decorations (1971) provides a glimpse inside a gurdwara – see the Contexts for these films for more on these. The Leeds Jewish community dates back to the 1840s. Currently numbering about 8,000, it is the second largest provincial Jewish community in Britain.It was greatly augmented by those moving from Bradford, after originally settling there in the middle to late 19th century to work in the woollen industry. Like all faiths, Judaism is made up of many different strands, or congregations, each with their own synagogue. The ‘United Hebrew Congregation Synagogue’ in Shadwell Lane was opened in 1986. One example of Jewish community development is the even more recent and modern Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Community Centre, providing resources for those needing support, especially those living in the forty new flats situated next to it. The history of Jewish communities in Britain, as in all of Europe and beyond, has often been a very unhappy one, with pogroms and other forms of persecution – all Jews were expelled from England by Edward II in 1290. Unfortunately Yorkshire has its own part in this history: 100 years before this expulsion York witnessed the infamous massacre of the city’s entire Jewish community of 150 men, women and children on the feast of Shabbat ha-Gadol, Friday March 16th 1190. An event whose consequences reverberate to this day. Fortunately this persecution of Jews has lessoned, only for other vulnerable minorities to become easy scapegoats for the ills of society. In contrast to the strong presence of Jewish communities going back to medieval Britain, Buddhism is relatively new to this Island. Although spreading out from it birthplace in Northern India 2,500 years ago, it didn’t really gain any foothold in Britain until the 19th century when Buddhist texts were translated into English, and Sir Edwin Arnold, in 1879, compiled an epic poem describing the Buddha's life, The Light of Asia. The first Englishman to be ordained as a Buddhist monk (Bhikkhu) was Allan Bennett, who went to Sri Lanka in 1898 and returned as Ananda Metteyya. The Buddhist Society of Great Britain was founded in 1907, although it was the London Buddhist Society, founded by Christmas Humphreys in 1924, that really gave a national voice to Buddhism as a whole. A combination of Buddhists escaping persecution in Tibet, and the development of interest in Eastern thought during the 1960s, led to the growth of Buddhism in the west – books like Zen and the Art of Archery, and Hermann Hesse’s 1951 novel Siddhartha, played a significant part in this. There are now many Buddhist centres and retreats in Britain, and the 2001 census put the number of Buddhists in Britain as over 150,000. Buddhism is something of an odd-one-out among these faiths in that some do not regard it as being a religion at all, there being no god (it is not theistic). But whatever one takes religion to be, at the very least it involves a relationship between the individual and that which is taken as absolute: a reality or truth which is also fundamentally ethical. Each of these faiths have their own vision of what this is, and codes and practises that help to realise this relationship. For Buddhism this is an individual journey of liberation from greed, hatred and delusion; and hence from suffering. All the religions featured in the films are very diverse, with rich histories, and are extremely difficult to sum up in a few sentences. There has been a history of conflict and intolerance between faiths; but this has not always been the case, and there are those who are striving hard to release the essential tolerance within religions so that they can live together harmoniously. There are many ways to do this – the recent David Baddiel film, The Infidel, is one, and this group of films is another. Without trying to do too much, the films of Faith in the City very simply present the personal side of religion, of ordinary people setting out with a motivation for good, and building communities on the basis of this. References Christopher Gowans, Philosophy of the Buddha, Routledge, London, 2003. Paul Williams with Anthony Tribe, Buddhist Thought, Routledge, London, 1999. Mojomedia Renaissance Yorkshire Their Past Your Future The Jewish Community Of Leeds Leeds Jewish Info BBC Legacies: York's blackest day |
