Details
Pendle Hill presents a hybrid screening of “Nothing in the Way of Beauty.” The filmmaker Sue Schardt attends Beacon Hill Friends’ Meeting for Worship and would welcome New England F/friends to join in. Feel free to share with others you feel might be interested! Registration is required. Following is a synopsis and a link to sign up. Note that this film is recommended for a mature audience.
Synopsis: A man once set about making a place where beauty might flourish. He unlocked a door and invited everyone in. After many life-spans and a churning stream of visitors, we step through to find Tina, Chelsea, and Phoebe. One is retired from government work and uses her hourly wages from Target to buy paint and canvas. Another, who has Asperger’s, lives and works on the top floor of her mother’s row house with many pet rats. The third is a polymath, with a decade of advanced medical training, a stint in adult entertainment, and 13 years of recovery from heroin addiction. They are both together and apart, scraping colors, moving in circles, infused with a spirit we can’t see or touch, but waits to take shape, to arrive.
Director Sue Schardt made this work while in residence at the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia as she simultaneously began an extended, intermittent sojourn at Pendle Hill in January 2020. She recognizes the film arising, in part, from the sanctuary of Pendle Hill and—in particular—the continuing community gathered daily for worship via Zoom from the start of the pandemic. She and the artists featured in the film will share their reflections after the screening.