Coming to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, June 10: BIBLE QUIZ
Nicole Teeny’s Scripture spin on SPELLBOUND debuted at Slamdance last year, where it claimed the best doc award. Other fest appearances have included New Orleans, Newport Beach, Kansas, St Louis, Oxford, American Doc, and Spokane.
At the same time a competition doc and a portrait of adolescence, Teeny’s film profiles seventeen-year-old Mikayla, a girl from a troubled home who turns to religion for stability and acceptance – or, perhaps more accurately, she turns to a small circle of earnest, pious friends who happen to be obsessed with memorizing the Bible. Their goal: to win the National Bible Quiz Championship. Mikayla’s goal, even though she may not know it herself at first: to make team captain JP her (chaste) boyfriend. Following standard competition doc conventions, Teeny films her subjects engrossed in prep, committing huge chunks of Scripture to memory, and triumphant in battle, rattling it off at debate-speed to beat rival schools – initially fascinating in its peculiarity, but not particularly riveting in and of itself without a more nuanced, in-depth exploration of the impact of Christianity on these young people’s lives, which is strangely lacking here. The viewer might expect Teeny to concentrate on both Mikayla and her clean-cut, attractive crush, JP, but instead she wisely focuses on Mikayla, an appealing, intriguing teen. If she plays to the camera a little too much, it’s forgiveable, as her vulnerability still comes through, with her tentative exploration of burgeoning sexuality and attraction complicating what could have been an otherwise rote comp doc.
what (not) to doc 