Saturday, March 14, 2009

This Day In Ross History

Ross Films
Antioch College
Thursday March 14, 1974


Shewing Myne Eye







Ross Song
I Wish We'd All Been Ready
(We've Been Left Behind)



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1 comment:

marcolis said...

Doc Films screens evangelical films from the heartland.
By Patrick Friel

In the early 1970s, a few years before Jaws, another movie was freaking out tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people across the country. The film was A Thief in the Night and, like the drug-scare films of the ’30s (Reefer Madness) or the grisly auto-accident films many saw in driver’s ed, it was intended to give its viewers pause and provide a warning. Instead of “marihuana” or drunken driving, though, Thief was warning about the danger of not having accepted Christ before the Rapture comes.

A Thief in the Night, which opened Doc Films’ series on evangelical films last Thursday, was the first of four films on the Rapture and Tribulation made by two independent filmmakers based in Iowa. Russ Doughten had been making Christian films since the 1950s. Lifelong film buff Donald Thompson learned the craft while in the Air Force. He worked in television in Los Angeles before taking a job with public TV in Iowa.

Thompson had become a Christian only a few months before meeting Doughten and had felt a calling from God to put his talents to use in the service of his faith. The two talked about it, jotting notes on a napkin, and decided to form Mark IV Pictures and to make a film on the Rapture. Thompson was still unclear what it was all about but had been inspired by a children’s performance on the Rapture he saw at church.

A Thief in the Night was a hit, playing in churches and religious venues all over the U.S. At its height, Thompson tells us, they were receiving more than 1,500 bookings per month. They even turned down distribution offers from Hollywood. Over the next 15 years, Mark IV would produce a dozen films, including the three sequels to Thief and religious-themed Westerns (The Paradise Trail), crime thrillers (Blood on the Mountain) and screwball comedies (Whitcomb’s War). Most were directed by Thompson, who had a keen eye for location shooting and a clear understanding that his films had to work as entertainment as well as religious instruction: “It’s kinda hard to make a Christian film. If you preach to people, it turns them off.”

Read more: http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/film/84534/evangelical-film-series-at-doc-films#ixzz0pcT0UWFI

June 1, 2010 at 9:28 AM

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