"QUESTIONING FAITH fills a void in the interfaith world and enters a realm of common ground less traveled than other areas in our ministry. It is important that River Films find the resources to complete this film because it will offer depth and breadth of understanding among people of different religious traditions."

Sister Joan Kirby
Executive Director
The Temple of Understanding
(A global interfaith group in association with the
United Nations' Economic & Social Council)

 

 In QUESTIONING FAITH, Alston continues to investigate the style of first-person documentary filmmaking he explored in FAMILY NAME (nominated for a 1999 Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming).

Weaving together the stories of the many people he meets, Alston uses his own personal search as the narrative spine for the film.  The footage consists of vérité "real life" scenes and interviews on Super-16mm film, inter-cut with voice over reflections, Super-8 home movies, photographs, and Hi-8 video footage from the lives of the film's main subjects. 

Eastman Kodak and The Independent Feature Project have both recognized QUESTIONING FAITH as a groundbreaking documentary project and have awarded film grants in order for it to be shot on Super-16mm stock.

Moving beyond his achievements in FAMILY NAME, Alston hopes with QUESTIONING FAITH  to push the boundaries of cinéma vérité documentary. He is committed to imbuing this traditional documentary method with an aesthetic style usually reserved for fiction films. Alston is working with the Academy Award winning Director of Photography Tom Hurwitz, developing strategies to capture on film the spontaneity of "real life" as beautifully as possible.

Both Hurwitz and Alston's primary commitment is to story and to the drama that unfolds on every human face every minute of the day. While they are both partial to breath-taking aesthetics, their ultimate values in making this film are clarity and simplicity. Alston looks to Jean Rouch's 1961 documentary CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER, especially scenes in which people reflect on heart-breaking experience, as a model of power in simplicity, and cites it as a major influence on the style and approach of QUESTIONING FAITH.

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