A Christian View of Faith and Films

Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center of Dallas Theological Seminary, and our topic today is the arts and Christians. We have a very special guest, John Priddy, that's P-R-I-D-D-Y, I don't want to mislead people about anything about John. Anyway. John Priddy is CEO and Co-Founder of the Windrider Institute, which is a very interesting organization. John, we're really glad to have you. I'm going to introduce you here in just a second with some little facts about you, but I just want to say thanks for doing this with us.

John Priddy:
Great to be with you, happy to always be on a talk with you, Darrell.

Darrell Bock:
Well, great to be with you. John is a successful entrepreneur and Peabody award-winning film producer and is a leader in the creation and expansion of entrepreneurial companies in the development of private and non-profit enterprises. He's the executive producer, ok this sounds exhausting, the executive producer of over 150 short films. That's a large number. I won't ask you to name them all. Including the award-winning ABSTRACTION, the New Copernicans web series, along with his brother, Ed, is an executive producer of award-winning documentaries, and then there's a nice long list here of several things that you've done.

Darrell Bock:
So, John lives in Boise, Idaho, so he's with us over Zoom, which is the way everything happens today anyway. I mean I could live in Boise and we'd probably still be on Zoom. And then wife of, this says, 39 years, four grown children. Master of Arts in Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary, and you've been awarded the Brehm Center Distinguished Alumni Award, and you have your Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Colorado, so you've been all around the west. So, my opening question is always the same for everybody, how did a nice guy like you get in a gig like this?

John Priddy:
Well, I'm tired of hearing that bio as well. Anyways. Thanks, Darrell, it's good to be with you, and thanks for having me on the show. It's fun to tell the story. I'm a business guy by background, came out of the corporate world and then partnered with my two brothers, Mark and Ed, to create a nutritional supplement company, which is how we got to Boise, Idaho back in the mid '90s.

John Priddy:
We were in the right place at the right time, we grew that company, and it was acquired by a public company, and so I found myself at 40-years-old, trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up, and I got the idea that I know what I should do, I should go to seminary. So, off I went to Fuller Theological Seminary, that's about the year 2000, and I was pursuing a Masters of Theology at Fuller when I really became interested in the power of story and how story is starting to shape our culture. And this is 20+ years ago. And who would have known then where we would be at now today with all this technology and all the different ways that stories could be told?

John Priddy:
But the Windrider Institute was sort of built out of that foundation while I was at Fuller to where we got the idea that we would go to the Sundance Film Festival, which is the largest independent film festival in the world, really focus on independent storytellers and independent artists, and that we would go there, and so we did. And we took Fuller Seminary students, folks working on their Masters, and then Biola University undergraduate film students, with the idea that we would go to Sundance and we would watch Sundance films and then come back and talk amongst ourselves.

John Priddy:
17 years later, we are a full partner with the Sundance Institute, the Sundance Film Festival. This year, we did it virtually and we had over 35 Christian colleges, theological seminaries, pastoral and ministry groups join us virtually for the Windrider Forum and Summit at the Sundance Film Festival 2021. So, we would have never imagined all those years ago that we would be here today, but the power of story is really important during this era and this time.

Darrell Bock:
So, when you were first doing this and you were initially taking the seminary students there, had you already made a move into short films? Or were you just interested in getting a window on kind of where the culture was? Or was it both?

John Priddy:
Well, it was both really because my brother, Ed, and I started producing feature documentary films, and actually we would find these films at film festivals that were created as short films, and then we would get to know the filmmakers and then partner with them to turn the short film, and in many ways these were student films, and turn them into a feature film. And the very first film that we did was a film called To Die in Jerusalem, and that film was acquired by HBO. And so right out of the blocks we found ourselves in fortuitous space where we had made a feature documentary, HBO had come on board as a partner, and we started making feature documentary films in parallel to the work we were doing at Windrider. As the years went by, the short-form content came after the fact.

Darrell Bock:
I see. So, this might seem like a strange question, but I think it makes sense. So, you're a business guy, right, and all of a sudden you're making films, how much pre-preparation did you have? And I put "pre" on there on purpose, how much pre-preparation did you have to go into the space? Or was it a case of learning because you surrounded yourself with people who had been in the space? How did that work?

John Priddy:
It really was the latter. We were introduced to really talented filmmakers, and by and large in independent film then, as is now, having partnerships with business folks who get the creative process, I think, is a real asset. And so we came on as the executive producer role, which is really the business guy that comes in and partners with the artist. And so if done well, the collaboration between an artist, storyteller, and a person who has a bit of business acumen, that makes a lot of sense. But every film project is sort of like its own company; in fact, it's its own LLC, and so it runs like a business in so many ways, so there's a lot more synergy there than maybe meets the eye. And then as time went on, we got better and better at the craft of filmmaking, but originally we knew nothing about how to make a movie, but we knew how to spot talent when we see it, how to collaborate and create teams, and so those kinds of things worked well from the business background.

Darrell Bock:
I think film is a wonderful metaphor for just the workspace in general. And what I mean by that is someone goes to a film, they see the actors, they get a sense of who the writers are, they certainly appreciate the way in which the direction comes on, but then you go through those credits at the end in which there are literally hundreds of people who put something together. You only scratch the top visible surface of what it takes to put on a film. Is that a fair description of how it works?

John Priddy:
It's so true, and I really appreciate you talking about the credits because at a film festival actually, the audience doesn't leave until after the credits have rolled.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I don't either. I don't leave a film until after the credits have rolled because I'm sitting here, saying, "The reason I'm able to enjoy this is because of all the names that are flashing before me on the screen."

John Priddy:
That's exactly right. Even if it's a simplistic, short form, easy documentary film, those credits at the end are important. Storytelling, filmmaking is an extreme collaborative art. It's the ultimate in team-making and team-building. I come out of a baseball background, and I still love baseball, played a lot of baseball, coached a lot of baseball. Filmmaking is not unlike baseball, which is the person who plays catcher is very different than the person who plays pitcher, and the person who plays right field is different than the person who plays third base, but you need all of them. And that's a good analogy for how filmmaking works, that collaborative team. So, your director may not be the best cinematographer, so he or she has to find the best cinematographer.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly right. And actually the way I use it as a metaphor is it's an attempt to appreciate the average workspace, which is think about what it takes for you to have a bowl of Wheaties in the morning. And just think about where that starts versus what that gets you, and how many people have touched that process along the way, something that you do every day, have a bowl of cereal or eggs or whatever it is, and all the different industries that are involved to make that happen, etc. It's kind of what I call a celebration of the mundane. And film, with that art element on top of it, is the example in my mind of what we're talking about, what it takes to actually get to those 15 minutes or 90 minutes where a person is hopefully both entertained and made to reflect on what life is all about, which I'm assuming ... Talk about the name, Windrider, a second. I know I heard you tell this story before, I think this is fascinating. Why Windrider?

John Priddy:
Well, when we first started going to Sundance, the year prior to bringing folks to Sundance, we really felt like the creative spirit was alive and well within these independent films and within the filmmakers. And so we just think about Genesis 1:2, the Hebrew word, ruah, the wind of God that hovered over the Earth, the Creation, it felt right to us because the creative spirit that was then is still now. And so we were very much the followers of God's ruah, that creative spirit, the wind.

John Priddy:
And so wind riders was who we endeavor to be, folks that were trying to pay attention to where God's spirit was moving in the creative process through these stories, and that's the origination of Windrider, that we would be those folks that would ride God's wind. And it's so true. When we go to Sundance every year, we don't know, nobody has seen these films, we haven't engaged with them yet, and so we only go based on curating these films based on little bios in the program. So, the films come to us very new, and so we explore them in that new creative way. So, that's the inception of Windrider.

Darrell Bock:
And just the theological, I don't know if it's the sidebar or added addition to that is that when we think about people made in the image of God, one of the things that makes people in the image of God what they are in the Creation is this creative reflective ability that God has given to people that many theologians do connect to the idea of being made in the image of God, and this ends up being the expression of it. And then another area and space that you work in that I think is fascinating to think about theologically because everything that you guys are doing is just so beautifully tied to thinking through the way Creation works and what we might call general revelation or common grace, that space of looking for those things in our lives and in the Creation that make us reflect on life. That's the thing I really enjoy about the pieces that you all put together. I never walk away from a piece that you all put forward without reflecting on something that's going on around me.

John Priddy:
Well, thank you. General revelation is an important part of how we view this, common grace is an important part of how we view our work, but also the starting point is a bit different in how we come at cinema storytelling. So often in the church, we start with Scripture and then work our way out from Scripture to the topic at hand. But in our space, we reverse that, we even say, theologians will appreciate this, Dr. Craig Detweiler, one of our co-founders calls it reversing the hermeneutical flow. And really it's starting with the content, the story itself, in this case film, and working back to Scripture. And we see when we do that, general revelation and common grace are more self-evident when you start with that commonality and work back to the Scriptures, as opposed to starting only with text and moving forward that way.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I've just done a book, called Cultural Intelligence, in which the last chapter talks about how the church needs to do a better job of teaching by what I call switch hitting, you mentioned baseball. So, most seminaries teach their students to go from text to life, but most people read their Bible by going from life back to the text. So, that's why stories step into that space because they take you to that place, and then you go from there. And the appeal was we need to do a better job of understanding the Bible canonically enough that we're able to take life as it's dished to us and make sense out of what's going on theologically.

Darrell Bock:
And I think some of the things that you do take people there, but it's interesting, they don't always take them there through words, they take them there through images and storytelling, etc. And I do think one of the things that's happened at least in my lifetime, and, John, I guess it's true for you as well, is that the importance of story, it's always been with us, but there's a sense in which with all the technology that we have today, etc., that there are just a myriad of additional ways to get at story than was the case, say, 200 years ago.

John Priddy:
Well, I think that's right. I mean we really started seeing this trend about 20 years ago when we were beginning to get involved with film, and what was happening was they called it democratization of production, where production equipment, which was always really, really expensive, the cost of production equipment, cameras and such, lighting, were coming down, and so it was easier and easier for people to make a film. Then there was democratization of the editing equipment, which back when we started, you hired an editor who lived in New York or Los Angeles who had an editing suite with all this fancy equipment; prior to that, they were literally cutting film, literally with scissors.

Darrell Bock:
That's right, because it was literally film.

John Priddy:
It was.

Darrell Bock:
All the under-20s just asked what we just described.

John Priddy:
Yeah. I mean when you say cutting and splicing film, you and I get it. Many younger people are like, "What is cutting and splicing film?" But they actually did that. So, that all began to change. The democratization of the production side, then the democratization of the editing side. So, that all happened, so production costs were coming down, and the equipment was becoming lighter, so now you could more easily tell stories because you could go there with fewer people.

John Priddy:
The thing that was still not caught up to that was the distribution model, and it's still lagging, but we did not predict these platforms, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV, so on and so forth. We didn't have the technological bandwidth for those when this was all happening. Now we do. You mentioned YouTube and others. And so now you really have the ability to make a film, tell a story, and distribute it so that people would see it. And that is happening in real time.

John Priddy:
And then, of course, with the pandemic of late, I mean I do this, like what are we watching? What can we watch? One night, I turned to my wife and I said, "I'm done with Netflix, I watched it all. Nothing left." So, now we have people who have grown accustomed to watching content on these various platforms, on a TV, on a laptop, on a computer, and that's the change that's taken place, and it's accelerated in the last 12 months like 10 years of acceleration.

Darrell Bock:
That's amazing because when I think back to this conversation, I think back, when I was growing up, there were three networks, there were a handful of movie studios, and a handful of places to go watch movies, and that was it. And, today, I find myself amazed at all the different almost niche platforms that exist to distribute the stuff, and each one of them is taking on the responsibility of producing content that is uniquely theirs, so there's a mammoth growth, I am assuming, in demand for a variety of stories.

Darrell Bock:
So, things that, when there were only three networks, would never have made it on because the lane was so tight, it's like being on a two-lane highway, all of a sudden you got a eight-lane or 10-lane highway and a lot more stuff coming at you as a result, a lot more possibilities, and then, of course, you've mentioned the distribution. You've actually anticipated a question I was going to ask, which is how has the film industry changed since you started versus where you are, and you've basically just walked us through that very, very beautifully.

Darrell Bock:
I think this is fascinating for people because I think most people consume what gets produced, but they actually have very little understanding of what it takes to produce something. So, that's my next question, and that is take us through the steps of what it takes to produce something. Sometimes you hear in an award story something like this, "This has been a 10-year journey," and you're going, "10 years? Really?" How does that happen?

John Priddy:
Well, I guess I would start by saying this, anytime a film gets made, it's a miracle. It could be a minor miracle, could be a major miracle. I'm amazed that films get made. It's a very difficult process to make a film. A lot of things don't get made. It's a difficult process, it's one of the most challenging processes I've ever been a part of in the many things that I've been able to do in my life, just getting a film made. So, I always acknowledge whenever we're at a film festival, and we're super-fans of Sundance, but I always tell the filmmakers, "We're happy to be a part of your miracle because you got this movie made."

John Priddy:
It makes me think of the film, Burden, which won the Audience Award two years ago at Sundance, and we got very close with the filmmaker, Andrew Heckler. In fact, that film is now on Showtime, you can watch the film, Burden, and I highly recommend it. It's very graphic, very difficult, very challenging film, but it's an amazing film. But he wrote the film 25 years ago, based on a true story. And from the day he started to write the film to the day that you can see it has been 25 years. And that's a pretty extreme example, but funding fell out a couple of times on that, and just different barriers that happened along the way.

John Priddy:
But the filmmaker was called to make that film. He had a sense that no matter what happened, some day he would make that film, and he did. And so these independent filmmakers function, and if they feel somewhere between an entrepreneur meets a missionary meets a pastor, they're just compelled, and somebody has to be compelled to make a movie and not give up on it, and if that's not the case, the movie doesn't get made.

Darrell Bock:
Interesting. It does strike me as being quite ... I mean I think about I know nothing about script writing, but I do know that if you take a book and try to make it into a movie, it's got to go through a transformation to get from A to B, just at that level. That's before you even get to picking up a camera and doing anything with it. And so that's an involved process.

John Priddy:
That's why they call it, a separate Academy Award for screenwriter, the Best Adopted Screenplay.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah, exactly.

John Priddy:
Separate than a Best Original Screenplay because it's equally as difficult to do Best Adopted Screenplay, I'm sure.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah. Well, all that's background. Well, let me ask you a general question before we dive into some particular films that I want to talk about that you all have been involved with. Tell me what you are looking for when you're thinking about, "Do we do this or not?" What are you aiming at?

John Priddy:
Well, there's two parts of what we do at Windrider. One aspect is we produce content, make a lot of films. We also curate and license content. And so we have an ongoing of library of films that we've both made and films that we've curated and licensed into our library. And we look for the same thing in both, whether we're making something or curating a film to license, which are we believe, at Windrider, we're endeavoring to make films and find films that open up the highest potential for conversation around a topic. And this aspect has been true for the entirety of time we've been working at Windrider, but never more important than today, with this extreme polarization in our culture.

John Priddy:
Everybody is coming from a binary perspective these days. I shouldn't say coming from, sort of being forced into binary groups, tribal groups, and we're no longer having conversations around a topic. And so, for us, the selection process of stories we choose to make, the selection process of stories we choose to license are stories that take an issue that's really important today, and in particular important to people of faith, but to everyone in general, universal importance, and a story that could transport us outside of these binary groups and into a more directional thinking through conversation. And those conversations that we have are with the filmmakers or the characters or subjects of the film. So, that's what we're looking for, that's our runway that we try to always stay in is creating conversation.

Darrell Bock:
Okay. So, let me talk about three different pieces, and I'm going to flip the order, I was going to talk about ... because you've talked about the polarization. The one that you have currently on your website is called For the Love of Neighbor. And I didn't get a chance to look at it because by the time I found it, I didn't have enough time, but my understanding is it's about three different people in the public service sphere, politicians, and for different levels, local and national. Tell me more about that, For the Love of Neighbor. Right now, when I think of politics, that's not the first phrase that often jumps into my mind, so let's talk about why you saw that piece as valuable.

John Priddy:
Well, you're right, I mean it's sort of a head tilt when you say you're going to ... because, at Windrider, we try to stay out of electoral politics in general because once electoral politics enter into the conversation, there is no conversation, and so we've been really disciplined over the years to try to stay out of electoral politics. But For the Love of Neighbor was a film that was commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute and their Faith & Public Life division, which is taking some of the very brightest, young, Christian leaders in universities across the country and basically doing a level of teaching and interaction around those that feel called to serve in the public realm.

John Priddy:
So, For the Love of Neighbor, the filmmaker's a tremendous filmmaker, his name is Ryan Patch, close friend of Windrider. In fact, there's another film in our library, called Regulation, narrative film that he did, it's fantastic, so I commend that to you. But For the Love of Neighbor was a way that a filmmaker could tell a story about three different people who come at public service in three different ways.

John Priddy:
And they did a great job of not coming at it in a politicized way that says it's either Republican or Democrat, it led with the idea of the value of public service and the high calling of public service, and the reason why young people who are bent that way now need to be encouraged, not discouraged, from going into that space because if you spend your time around the political environment and you're watching any of the news channels, or even social media, you would be dissuaded from that. So, this tells the story of three different people serving in three very different ways in the political spectrum, in public service spectrum. And I think it's well done. And I think we need it. It feels like atonic or a healing bomb for why public service is important.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah, I'm attached to an organization here that's primarily local, called Christians in Public Service, in which the attempt is to minister alongside public servants, and people who step into that role are under incredible pressures from constituents in terms of both the kinds of decisions they face, the expectations that are had of them, the way in which, at least in many political environments today, you have to be constantly raising a lot of money in order to run. They're under terrific pressure.

Darrell Bock:
And so we've tried to come alongside them, almost like a chaplaincy, with people who've done public service before, it's completely non-partisan and just trying to serve them as Christians alongside. And I think it's an aspect of public service that, again, most people, it's like the filmmaking, they aren't even aware of what that part of a person's life is who tries to go there and what that can mean for them and the pressure that they're under. So, I was actually intrigued to see this because of that, and I'm actually looking forward to watching it, so that's a good example.

Darrell Bock:
Let me give you the second one. This is the first piece that I ever saw that you all did, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for this, it's Beneath the Ink. And Billy Joe White, who just was an interesting character, and I just think his story is fascinating. Most people will go, "Beneath the Ink, what in the world could that be about?"

John Priddy:
Well, Beneath the Ink, filmmaker is Cy Dodson, the character in the film, it's a documentary short, only 11 minute. And I saw the film for the first time at a film festival, I think three years ago, I lost track of time, and I watched the film and I was just blown away by it. It's the story of Billy Joe White, who lives in Appalachia, Zanesville, Ohio. He's tatted up from head to toe, he owns the Red Rose Tattoo parlor in Zanesville. Filmmaker Cy Dodson, who currently lives in Minneapolis, is also from Zanesville, Ohio. When Cy was going back home to visit his dad in Zanesville, picked up the local newspaper and saw an article that Billy Joe White was covering up hate tattoos, free of charge, in his tattoo parlor. And so if you have a hate tattoo, come on in and they'll cover it up and turn something awful into something beautiful.

John Priddy:
So, the film shows people who are coming in with swastikas on their body, and Billy Joe turns it into a flower, or a burning cross and a hooded Klansman get turned into an American eagle. But the people, the outward change of those tattoos is one thing, and an important thing, but the reason why the folks coming in to have those tattoos covered and the stories of their own transformation is really the heart of the story. And one of the subjects in the film, who had literally a burning cross and a hooded Klansman on his back, said the reason why he wanted to have the tattoo covered, he adopted an African American son, and he didn't want his African American son to ever see that on his back. And so on the outside you have change, and on the inside, prior to that.

John Priddy:
And we do what we call The W Episode, which is a talk show with a filmmaker or a subject of the film after each film, and The W Episode with Beneath the Ink, Phil Allen was moderating it, great moderator for our shows, and he basically said it feels like a baptism to some extent, like a new creation with that. So, Beneath the Ink, Cy Dodson, Billy Joe.

Darrell Bock:
It's a great, great piece. I'll put it this way, you go watch that piece and you'll be hooked on Windrider because you'll understand what it's about. I mean it's just amazing piece of film. The third one that I want to mention is Kintsugi, which you all not only filmed and did a beautiful job with, but also it becomes a metaphor in some ways for the human condition. So, talk about that one. Obviously, the moment I say it, people will go, "Kintsugi, that doesn't sound like an English word," so let's start there.

John Priddy:
Kintsugi's not an English word, it's Japanese. I think "kint" means gold and "sugi" means mended, or the other way around, one of those two things. We work closely with Makoto Fujimura, who's a world-renowned artist, and we had been in Japan, filming some short films with Mako a few years back, and Mako really was interested in this movement theologically from creation to new creation. And he was really talking about the art of kintsugi, and the art of kintsugi is an ancient art in Japan where they take the Japanese bowls and dishes and the various different things that are important to the Japanese people, and when they're broken, a kintsugi master actually puts them back together, using streams of gold, and the broken piece is now put together in a way that makes it more valuable than before it was broken.

John Priddy:
And Mako has really led the way on kintsugi, and so the short film really tells his journey of interacting with the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi. He's recently written a book, called Faith Plus Art: A Theology of Making, and in that is a chapter on kintsugi and many other things that he's come at because that's how he's coming at the world as an artist. In this ground-zero moment of our life, he was there in 9/11 at Ground Zero, that's where his studio was, and then being a Japanese American, he was very close to all the earthquakes, tsunamis, and all the things that took place in Japan, and so he has really come at the conversation around kintsugi. But beyond that, talking about what does it look like to process through trauma in the ground-zero experiences of our life. It's very relatable.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah, and the beauty, of course, is the metaphor that you've already alluded to, which is that people are broken, and when we're put back together, particularly when God puts us back together, it's something that's very, very, very beautiful. How many films begin with a bowl being shattered on the ground? Again, one of the things that's always interesting in many of the pieces that I've seen is the open imagery is captivating and it catches you, and you realize, "Okay, I'm just being introduced to a metaphor that I think is going to walk me through this short," and kintsugi is a good example.

Darrell Bock:
There's another one that you've done, and I don't remember the title of it. I think I've just seen the trailer, I don't think I've seen the real thing. But it's of a boy wandering through the Creation, and I guess the theme is going to be the discovery of beauty and life or something to that effect. Like I say, every time I look at one of the things that you all do, there's an opening imagery or there's imagery somewhere in the piece that catches your attention, and you say you're there to generate conversations, you can watch these pieces, there's no way you can get away without talking about what it is that you've just seen. Very, very nice.

John Priddy:
That's film called Wondrous, by the way. The filmmaker is Sebastian Rogers, and it's basically a poem, and it's only three minutes, I think three, four minutes, it's very short, and it's a little boy going through with wonder through the streets of Portland actually, which is really interesting, given what's going on there today, really beautiful. But it's an example how filmmakers who come, in this case, from a faith perspective really undergird good theology around a film that anybody could watch. Wondrous, you wouldn't think it was a Christian movie in any way, but it's really got good bones and infrastructure of good theology under it, and so I think, from that standpoint, it's really beautiful.

Darrell Bock:
That's interesting, if it's only three or four minutes long, then I probably did see the real thing. Wow. And part of the reason I went through some samples like this is to show really the array of things that you do. I can't think of the last time a Christian thought theologically about the impact of a tattoo parlor, those two things don't normally come together in my mind. Obviously, the political space is one that we often occupy. But the cross-cultural nature of Kintsugi is an interesting touch of seeing how another culture has developed a custom.

Darrell Bock:
And what was interesting today in trying to find the film, because I knew what the film was, but I did not recall the title because Kintsugi doesn't stick in your brain as an American, and so I was looking for the film, and when I went to look for the film to try and see if I could find it and find the title, first I determined that Kintsugi was probably what we were talking about by the descriptions of what I was seeing on the Google search, and then I went to the video section and all of a sudden a library of Kintsugi videos showed up of all sorts, including a couple of Mako's that he has worked on to explain what it is.

Darrell Bock:
And I'm sitting here, going, "I just walked into a huge cultural space I didn't even know existed." And so that was fascinating. So, the array of the variety of things that you all do is also amazing. So, we've talked a lot about filmmaking and what you all do. I do want to give you a little bit of time to talk to people about how could they get in touch with what it is that you all are doing. What would you recommend to people from that level? How do people find out what Windrider's doing?

John Priddy:
So, we're known for doing two things, which is we have a big event every year in January at the Sundance Film Festival, and we physically go to the festival and we are usually 300 people-strong, and a lot of young people, undergraduate students, graduate, theological students, folks from Dallas Theological Seminary join us, Fuller and others. And then we have a lot of community leaders from around the country that come to Sundance. You can go on our website, which is www.WindriderInstitute.com. Is that right? I'm looking at my producer. It's .org. I'm going to restate that so Ryan can recut it. You can go on www.WindriderInstitute.org and find out what's going on relative to what we're doing at Sundance.

John Priddy:
And then we partner with groups like yours, Darrell, to license content and to make it available to your audience. And so what we're trying to do from a distribution standpoint is rather than go directly to the consumer ourselves, which is one way to do it, we work with groups that want to cultivate and curate content that we would have, and then bring that to your audience. So, Darrell, we need for you all to partner with us to get some of this content to your audience because we think it's worthwhile, and now our library is significant, and so we have a lot offerings.

Darrell Bock:
I will be calling you as soon as we're done and we'll nail it down.

John Priddy:
[crosstalk].

Darrell Bock:
We're actually doing something here that's a new initiative for us that puts us in the position to do something like that. So, my friends and I will be calling you very, very soon. So, could churches connect to this? I mean you said groups, so how does that work? And then I do want to allow a touch of time for you to talk about what you're doing with Christian colleges and seminaries. So, let's talk about churches first.

John Priddy:
Yeah, really churches could connect, but by and large, there are pastors who are really already there, they're already working with media and working with film. I think the biggest challenge, Darrell, that we're seeing out there, so we talked about the production side, we talked about the distribution side, well now the amount of content available to everyone is overwhelming. And what we endeavor to do at Windrider is to really take the curation role very seriously.

John Priddy:
So, we really think our highest and best service to any group, but this is particularly interesting to pastors whose time is so limited, is we do the curation of the films and the W Episodes for the conversation. We go as far as creating discussion guides that we call Exploration Guides. And so, yes, pastors can connect with us on that same website to figure out how to use our content. But I think, at the end of the day, we could stream through all the noise and just the abundance of content, which really can be overwhelming, and we try to curate content with an eye towards usage in ministry context.

Darrell Bock:
I'm thinking about this, people have had book clubs for years, you could theoretically have a Windrider club in which you look at a different piece each time you meet. How vast is the library? That would be, I think, a question.

John Priddy:
Our library is already up to 50 films, and we will have over 100 by the end of this year.

Darrell Bock:
Wow. Okay. So, that could keep the club going.

John Priddy:
Club's going to be busy.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah. That's great. Talk about what you do with schools. What are you doing with schools?

John Priddy:
I'm a big fan of CCCU education, Christian colleges and universities. It's a very challenging time to be a Christian college today. And within our partnership with AEI, we work with them, and a lot of those students are Christian leaders in secular school. So, we have a real heart for the next generation of Christian leaders. So, oftentimes, people think of Windrider as a "film group," but we see ourselves as a both/and. Yes, we attract the next generation of storytellers and filmmakers, and that's important, for sure, but for every one of those, there are 20 emerging Christian leaders coming through the undergraduate ranks, and they're going to go into any location. Could be in ministry, could be outside of ministry.

John Priddy:
And so we feel like if you're going to be in leadership in any way, to have your thumb on the pulse of what's happening in the cultural conversation is critical. And so, at Windrider, we are trying to say, "This is what's happening on the front lines of culture. Some of it's hard to watch. Some of it makes you uncomfortable." We feel though that young people today really need to be able to see what's happening out there on the front lines, and in many ways we would say we're training a generation of first responders. By the time this challenge comes into their context, they're not surprised by it, they've already been in the trauma of it, they've seen it, they've known how to respond, and so when it comes to in their context and their sphere of leadership, they're ready to deal with that as it happens.

John Priddy:
And so it's sort of like at the Sundance Film Festival, as an example, for an undergraduate student to go, you're going to see cultural conversations that are going to be coming into your context six months down the road, a year down the road, and it really gives you a chance to think through what you think about these things and how to respond to them, and to have a ready response and a gracious response because the complexities of life today are numerous. So, that's why we have a heart for young people. And we know, as it relates to the faith conversation, that for the first time young people are leaving the faith and not returning when they hit adulthood, and so it's very important for young people to also see the beauty that undergirds our faith tradition.

Darrell Bock:
So, I'll ask you, this will be my last question, if you were to think what is the biggest challenge in the arts area, what would you see that as being? And then what advice would you give to people who observe the arts from a Christian point of view about that challenge?

John Priddy:
Well, I think when you start with the arts, the biggest challenge is to be an artist right now, it is very difficult to be an artist because it's difficult to earn a living as an artist, it's difficult to be understood as an artist, that's why I recommend Mako Fujimura's book, Faith Plus Art, to your audience. I would say it's important for those that don't consider themselves "artists" in the truest sense of the word, painters, sculptors, craftsmen, artisans of any kind, the church needs to surround those folks and to help them providing resources, buying their art, be an art buyer.

John Priddy:
I love to buy art from local artists, I like to think about a place in my house where a piece of art is needed and then go find that from a local artist. And so I think in many ways the challenge of the arts is that our lack of appreciation, understanding of the artist and the need that we have. We work really closely with the International Arts Movement, and we hear that over and over again from artists across the board, just to be recognized and seen and come alongside as a valuable part of our communities.

John Priddy:
And now more than ever, artists are ... We have a little video with Mako that he said artists are like honeybees, they pollinate. And so we need artists. Kind of a long answer to a short question, but I've spent a bit of time on it because it's near and dear to my heart. And that's how I got involved originally is by coming alongside artists and being in the room with them as they're trying to present and sell their art, standing with them arm-to-arm. I think it's an important thing, and there's a lot of gaps in our communities around that.

Darrell Bock:
Yeah. When the culture is only filled with art coming from somewhere else without asking some of the questions that the kinds of artists you are highlighting, then the challenge even becomes greater, so we need artists who can speak into the space, "speak" in quotes, I mean tell stories in that space, and in some cases just visualizing that space in a way that causes people to reflect. Well, John, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us, this has been a fascinating time, as it always is when we interact. I will be calling you, we do have an idea in the back of our heads for what it is that we're thinking about doing that I think will connect with what you all are doing, so just great to be with you again, as always.

John Priddy:
Thank you, Darrell, great to be with you and your audience.

Darrell Bock:
You're very, very welcome. Thank you for listening to The Table podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And if you wish, leave us a review on the Apple Podcast, that always helps more people find us. And we're like Windrider, we want to be found because we think we have something worth finding and reflecting on. So, thank you for being with us, and we hope you'll join us again soon.