Cinema Journey - HAMAKOM

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What is Cinema Journey?

Part of our A Place for Films network, Cinema Journey is a film club that helps us engage in our personal journeys of spiritual growth through the story-telling power of movies. Spiritual growth requires a process of change and a shift in perspective that entails letting go of our egos and allowing our spirit-centered selves to emerge. Cinema Journey utilizes the cinematic story-telling elements of light, color, action, dialog, character development, symbolism, cinematography and music to facilitate that change and shift in perspective. In this way, movies help us to step outside of our comfort zones and access our more authentic, inner truths, which, in turn, help us to move towards deeper relationship with each other, our communities, our planet, and the Divine (however we understand the Divine).

About Our Themes

Each season, we watch and discuss four movies that are connected by a common underlying theme. While our themes span a wide range of subjects, they always share an underlying element of the Jewish wisdom tradition. Past season's themes have included Creation, Honoring Parents, Listening, Middot, New Paradigms, Renewal of Spirit, Pillars of Value, and the Evolution of Community.

Our theme for the 2024-2025 season is Power: Bad Inheritance. Each of the four diverse, penetrating and thought-provoking films that we will watch and discuss this season will offer a different perspective on the downstream effects of the white, male power structure on women, indigenous people of color, the environment, and white men of conscience. Film discussions are hosted by Valerie Edwards.

How to Participate

Cinema Journey is open to anyone interested in watching and discussing meaningful movies. You don't have to be a HAMAKOM member, Jewish, or living in Southern California! If you have family or friends who might enjoy Cinema Journey, please invite them to join us!

During each film conversation, Valerie will invite you to delve deeply into the nuances of the film's characters, plot-lines, cinematography, symbolism, music and dialog. You'll be invited to immerse yourself in the movie's "world" and to see that world through the eyes of the film's characters. Valerie's lively, iterative, question-driven style creates a welcoming and inspiring space for audience members to explore and share their experiences of the film - and to discover in that film its underlying life lessons and hidden spiritual truths.

Ready to get started? It's easy!

Sign up here to join the Cinema Journey mailing list! Every three months or so you'll receive information about out upcoming movie, including how to watch it and details for joining the film conversation. It costs nothing except to stream the movies at your convenience.
Click RSVP to let us know that you're planning to attend the upcoming discussion.
Watch the film on your own. Streaming and rental availability for the upcoming movie is listed below.
Attend the film discussions in person or via Zoom. Enjoy!

June Selection: "The Descendants"

How do you fight 'The Man' when you ARE 'The Man'?
Taking responsibility for white, male privilege

(2011 | Alexander Payne, Director | USA | 115 mins | Comedy, drama)

Film Discussion will be June 19 at 7:00 PM remote on ZOOM!
Zoom link sent upon registration.

RSVP HERE

Matt King, a Honolulu-based attorney, is as close to an aristocrat as it is possible for an American to be. His family tree stretches back to the earliest white settlers in Hawaii and includes indigenous royalty as well. It is through this bloodline that Matt is the sole trustee of a family trust of 25,000 acres of pristine land on Kauai. While Matt has ably managed his own finances (as his father did), most of his cousins have squandered their inheritances. With the trust expiring in seven years, the King clan is pressuring Matt to sell the land for hundreds of millions of dollars. But when his wife Elizabeth falls into an irreversible coma after a boating accident, Matt, who has always seen himself as the ‘back-up parent, the understudy’, suddenly becomes not only the primary parent for his two difficult daughters and the one who must execute the challenging terms of his wife’s living will, but also the person who must decide the fate of his family’s legacy.

STREAMING OPTIONS

Past Cinema Journey Conversations

March 2025
Dark Waters

What happens when corporations gain control over local economies, public institutions and the political system?
Corporate and institutional complicity in environmental pollution

February 2025
Mona Lisa Smile

What happens when young women are trained to uphold and promote the very power structure that keeps them down?
Institutional sexism in higher education

January 2025
Limbo