New to DVD and VOD this week:
AN ACT OF LOVE
Director:
Scott Sheppard
Premiere:
Mill Valley 2015
Select Festivals:
Denver, Florida, St Louis, Sedona, Newport Beach, Bentonville, deadCENTER, LGBT fests in Calgary, Mumbai, Hartford, Kansas City, Memphis, Palm Springs, Atlanta, extensive church screening tour
About:
A Methodist minister, defrocked after officiating his son’s same-sex marriage, becomes an inadvertent LGBT rights activist.
After his son Tim came out, Reverend Frank Schaefer was personally forced to confront an issue that splits his denomination to this day. Although the United Methodist Church has rejected LGBT ministers and punished heterosexual ones who have officiated same-sex marriages, Schaefer agreed to oversee his son’s wedding. Eventually, an aggrieved parishioner reported him, and, after Schaefer refused to refrain from future officiations, he was defrocked. In his earnest, straightforward profile, Sheppard recounts Schaefer’s story and the efforts he made to be reinstated while speaking out for LGBT inclusivity in the church. While overscored to a detrimental degree, and offering little new in the already well-covered subgenres of same-sex marriage docs and religion/LGBT docs, Schaefer does emerge as an engaging figure whose message could potentially reach the unconverted.
what (not) to doc 