Razie Brownstone, 90, grew up with strict Jewish parents and a fear-mongering rabbi who told stories about sin and punishment to encourage good behaviour and instil a lifelong fear of God. In the acclaimed short documentary Bacon and God’s Wrath, Razie reflects on an adult life well lived, and especially her journey to becoming ‘an infidel’ in her later years with some help from ‘the Google’. The Canadian filmmaker Sol Friedman deploys some creative filmmaking techniques – including bringing animated life to the head of a pig’s carcass – to explore Razie’s complicated relationship with religion, and how she ultimately reached the conclusion that ‘faith is belief without evidence’. The film comes to a delicious climax with Razie trying bacon, a food forbidden to kosher Jews, for the first time in her life.
Director: Sol Friedman
Producer: Sarah Clifford-Rashotte
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Death
Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?
9 minutes
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Nature and landscape
Take a serene hike through an ancient forest, inspired by a Miyazaki masterpiece
6 minutes
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Design and fashion
The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays
14 minutes
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Architecture
Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China
16 minutes
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Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
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Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
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Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
The world turns vivid, strange and philosophical for one plane crash survivor
16 minutes