Information for Social Change

This film by Julian Samuel has to be the most intellectually
dishonest documentary ever produced. Samuel has produced a subjective
and biased reflection on religion and the question of whether a
Supreme Being organized the Universe...
...an example of this bias is when Professor Samuel has his
interviewees discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Bush
administration's foreign policy in a clearly anti-Israeli and anti-
American way. What this has to do with atheism, spirituality or even
a theological reflection on the meaning of life is anyone's guess.

Frederic Eger: Atheism by Julian Samuel
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-11-7/47843.html
29 November 2006

Like Richard Dawkins’ much-discussed recent book The God Delusion,
Atheism makes not the slightest attempt to win over anyone who might
feel that there’s any validity to spiritual beliefs.

Montreal Mirror, 30 November 2006: God be damned
MALCOLM FRASER

Samuel is either unfamiliar with film language or unwilling to engage
with it, and it's a shame, because this non-professionalism
compromises his film. Some of his on-camera shock techniques -
including the opening credits, which depict a hand tarring a Bible
with the film's title (and Samuel's own name, one letter at a time) -
are laughable and tedious.

HOUR: 30 November 2006; God day afternoon, The anarchy of atheism
Melora Koepke

* 1/2 - Atheism, documentaire de Julian Samuel. Quelle place occupe
Dieu dans le monde, la philosophie, la politique? L'athéisme est-il
une religion?

Un documentaire prétentieux et vain. On est loin de la révolution
copernicienne.

Ce qui rend ce film méprisable n'est pas tant que l'on n'y apprend
rien de neuf, mais plutôt la façon dont ce rien de neuf est
emballé: c'est pédagogiquement nul et cinématographiquement
pédant. Tant mieux si le réalisateur s'est amusé, car nous, on
s'est plutôt mortellement emmerdés.

La Presse, 2 December 2006; Atheism : quand le spirituel déprime
Anabelle Nicoud, Collaboration spéciale

Julian Samuel explique pourtant que son film entend poser un regard
sur la manière dont un athée comme lui est devenu une personne
religieuse. Atheism un prouve en fait rien de tel. Il soulève des
questions, met bout à bout des croyances et des incroyances, laissant
au spectateur ses propres convication quant au reste.

Le Devoir, 1 December 2006,
Odile Tremblay: “Croire ou ne pas croire”

Interviewees:

Tariq Ali, author,
The Clash of Fundamentalisms

Fadi Hammoud,
Journalist and
Middle East specialist

Alison MacLeod, author,
The Wave Theory of Angels

Christine Overall,
Professor of Philosophy, Queen's University

Jean-Claude Pecker, astrophysicist
Collège de France and Académie des Sciences, Paris (retired)

Noomane Raboudi
Specialist on Islam

John Shelby Spong
former Episcopal
Bishop of Newark, NJ.

“Atheism” confronts religion and its discontents by introducing
the views of a physicist who refutes the Big Bang, and with it the
possibility of a creation; a novelist who uses post-Newtonian
concepts as a story-telling device; two experts on Islam; a Christian
thinker from within the church; an atheist, originally from an
Islamic country; and a philosopher who topples the world of miracles
by subjecting them to the rational waters of logic upon which, it
emerges, one can’t walk, despite surface tension.

Julian Samuel

REVIEWS IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

Sylvat Aziz

This visual essay, comprising scholarly and accessible interviews,
should prove to be universally provocative in the most positive
sense. Comparisons between science, revealed and other religions,
artistic values and histories place a premium on reason. Although
the title/topic is exceptionally large and in its nature
sociopolitically charged, in this case theism and atheism are
discussed intelligently and expertly using language that avoids
jargon. A most refreshing circumstance. One can find a sensitive
clarity throughout, a sense of humour in the background, poignant and
at times with a bite, that extenuates the fragility of complex
systems of human thought discussed herein.

Although the video strays from strict documentary form, dogmas,
beliefs, habits and so on are discussed without promulgating a
particular dogma, belief, habit.

The more abstract visual references insinuated in the video; the use
of stained glass windows, overlaid gestural calligraphy, references
to religious icons and ritual practices, allusions to biological
beginnings and other visual elements, are sometimes more successful
than others but on the whole, these serve as a practical as well as
symbolic matrix for the interviews, adding a relevant visual textural
interest. The framing is direct and strong avoiding clutter, making
content confident.

In the main the value of this essay lies in its humane, non-
proselyitizing position and the thoughtful responses to questions
concerning many facets of this very complex, essentially human set of
ideas.

Official selection: La 35e édition du Festival du nouveau cinéma:
2006:

http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/2006/fiche_film.php?id=06-9251

“Quelques personnes se doivent de faire des documentaires
intellectuellement fouillés et denses, sinon nous ne ferons que des
trucs comme The Corporation, Bowling for Columbine et tous ces trucs
qui sont visuellement divertissants, humoristiques, légers mais qui
n'ont que très peu de profondeur analytique.” Ce commentaire
controversé, Julian Samuel le formulait en 2004 après la sortie de
son documentaire Save and Burn, sur ce qu'il appelait la mort des
bibliothèques. Fidèle à sa démarche exigeante et intellectuelle,
il nous revient avec une réflexion sur l'athéisme en cette période
de grands troubles idéologiques et religieux. Est-ce une nécessité
ou une absurdité pour l'homme de prétendre à l'athéisme?
Universitaires et penseurs s'offrent à la caméra de Samuel pour
bousculer deux ou trois idées reçues.

Jeff Sims, Philosophy and Religious Studies

Julian Samuel's most recent documentary, Atheism, poses a vigorous and
provocative challenge to what are primarily (but not exclusively),
Semitic
brands of theism both cherished and challenged in the western,
intellectual
world. With 71 minutes of film on hand, Samuel endeavors to discover
what
might reasonably be said of this elusive and, perhaps, too
transcendent theme. Theism, Samuel suggests, sardonically permeates
our human, all too human history, lending itself precariously to the
wayward advances of
political authority, underwriting a host of societies around the globe.
Using a broad range of interview subjects - portraying graphic
illustrations
of our most candid thoughts - and each with their own discriminating
sense
of interpretation, Samuel speaks with physicists, philosophers,
bishops, political scientists, and Middle Eastern scholars,
all in an effort to delineate a sensible understanding of a most
insensible
topic. Samuel's Atheism should come as highly recommended viewing for
both the irreligious, and still, religious thinker of the 21st century.

Robert Wiechec

Le film "Atheism by Julian Samuel" interroge sur la question
d’absence de Dieu dans la vie du monde. Le documentaire nous plonge
rapidement dans les réflexions et positions émanant des divers
interrogés. Cette démarche produit un remarquable tableau des
éventualités. Les questions d’encrage religieux prennent place.
Les croisades, les guerres, l’Inquisition et le mystère. Par
opposition, elles sont suivies par d’intéressantes interrogations
d’ordre scientifiques et philosophiques du réel.

Pour l’auteur une œuvre d’art doit questionner. C’est à cela
que nous assistons. À travers des interviews, Julian Samuel sonde
subtilement les sensibilités de ses interlocuteurs pour ensuite les
confronter avec les siennes. Cette démarche très instructive sur les
positions athées possibles a aussi pour but sa propre auto-
reconduction. L'auteur tente une confrontation et essaye de
réaffirmer, une fois encore, le choix qu'il avait fait à l’âge de
ses 16 ans. Les loyaux de Julian Samuel, à voir impérativement. Ce
film va vous saisir.

Atheism, 71 minutes, 2006. A documentary by Julian Samuel.

published: 1 October 2006:

www.montrealserai.com

http://www.montrealserai.com/2006_Volume_19/19_3/Article_7.htm

Review by

Maya Khankhoje

[Maya Khankhoje, who has no religious affiliation, believes that the
study of religion is important because the latter both shapes, as
well as reflects, human behaviour.]

“This film”, announces Julian Samuel’s deep voice,
“is a look at how an atheist like me becomes a religious person”.
To prove his point, he interviews people placed on either side of the
religious/atheist divide: Tariq Ali, author of “The Clash of
Fundamentalisms”; Fadi Hammoud; Journalist specializing in Middle
Eastern Affairs; novelist Alison McLeod, author of “The Wave Theory
of Angels”; Christine Overall, Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s
University; Jean-Claude Pecker, retired astrophysicist and member of
Académie des Sciences, Paris; Noomane Raboudi, specialist on Islam
and John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal Bishop of Newark.

From the outset, Samuel warns his viewers that some scenes
might be shocking: the juxtaposition of condoms and photographs of
Pope Pius XII (whose leadership of the church during the holocaust
raised many eyebrows); raunchy clay figurines smashed on a Bible; a
primeval Eve sliding naked on a tree branch; the word ATHEISM tarred
on a Bible; fish and chapattis (instead of loaves of bread)
miraculously multiplied not by a benevolent Christ, but by clever
computer graphics; a triumphant Mussolini riding in full regalia on a
wall behind the altar of a Montreal church and many more. If the
images do not succeed in shocking modern viewers inured to the
anything-goes tenor of the media, they will certainly goad them into
questioning their religion, be it Christianity, Islam or an all-
knowing Cartesian rationality. Other major religious systems are
barely touched upon, a limitation not mentioned by the author, nor is
the spiritual dimension brought into the equation.

The structure of the film is the traditional piecing-
together of snippets of interviews taken at different times and
locations, which creates the illusion of an ongoing discussion
amongst various thinkers, threaded together by the interviewer’s
voice. This is done quite successfully. For the most part the film-
maker keeps off our visual and audio reach, although occasionally
extreme close-ups of his face pop into the narrative, interrupting
its flow. At other times, his camera work is a bit wobbly, but this
is a very minor fault in an otherwise well constructed film.

The strongest point of the film is the variety of very
articulate voices who speak, not on the subject of atheism as the
title would suggest, but rather on the subject of Christianity and
Islam and their effects on politics. For Tariq Ali, the United
States is a society suffused with religion, where 90% believe in the
deity, 70% believe in angels and 60% believe in Satan. We can
imagine Ali smiling as he quotes Goethe who said that if you believe
in the devil, you are already in his clutches! He also reminds us
that all fundamentalisms share the same features. For him, there
isn’t much of a difference between the Bali bomber who killed many
Australians and the American anti-abortionist who killed doctors on
behalf of God. Noomane Raboudi explains how many current regimes
like Saudi Arabia and Israel, would have no legitimacy were it not
for the belief that God had privileged their territories. He also
points out that American Imperialism has broken the backbone of the
movement towards Arab unity started by Nasser. Christina Overall
strongly believes that there is no evidence that atheists or
agnostics are any less moral than religious believers and warns us
that whilst religion is more efficient at inculcating moral values,
these values are not necessarily desirable, such as the inferiority
of women and of entire groups of people. She also laments that the
church turned away from Ibn Sina (Avicenna) the great medieval
physician of the Islamic world, because it felt threatened by his
knowledge. Fadi Hammoud points out that the Islamic world is not
monolithic and that there have always been atheists in its milieu,
going as far back as the Abbassid caliphate from 749 to 1258. Alison
McLeod makes a plea for wonder and curiosity which she deems “a
moral function”. Jean-Claude Pecker sees time as an infinite
function, thereby endorsing Aristotle’s non-creationist viewpoint.
He also points to the flaws in the Big Bang theory which some
Christians have renamed Intelligent Creation and incorporated it into
their creationist theory. John Shelby Spong affirms that “any system
of economics or politics that denigrates any human being cannot be of
god”.

This film, like any piece of art worth its salt, raises
more questions than it answers. It does so within the limited
framework of two world religions engaged in a modern-style crusade,
and a third religion playing a surrogate role in an expansionist game
which has nothing to do with the expansion of the universe and all to
do with creating black holes in other people’s territories.
However, there is still a lot of work for this independent film-
maker to tackle, both in terms of technique as well as focus and
content. For starters, he could explore how major pre-Biblical
religions have shaped the culture of millions of people throughout
the world. And he could end with a more complete analysis of how
religion and politics form a toxic brew which is poisoning the
shared civilization that humanity has constructed over several
millennia.

If Julian Samuel believes that a journey through his film
will lead from atheism to theism he is either sadly mistaken or his
tongue has stuck to his cheek. What can happen, however, is that
believers in the creationist theory posited by the Bible as well as
believers in the Big Bang theory posited by some astrophysicists will
both be shaken to the core.

Samuel’s film is an excellent example of how art can
subvert the powers-that-be, in this case, the religious establishment.

29 November 2006

Frederic Eger

http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-11-7/47843.html

This film by Julian Samuel has to be the most intellectually
dishonest documentary ever produced. Samuel has produced a subjective
and biased reflection on religion and the question of whether a
Supreme Being organized the Universe. Shot with nonprofessional
camera equipment, the filmmaker interviewed a questionable choice of
"experts"—the author of a book on angels, a Lutheran minister, and
journalists reporting on the Middle East and religious fundamentalists.

From beginning to end, the documentary focuses on the existence of a
Supreme Being and only two religions, Islamism and Catholicism. The
filmmaker does not interview a Buddhist monk or master, the Dalai
Lama, a Hindu swami, or rabbi. He doesn't even bother to talk with an
ordinary devotee or disciple of any oriental religion, nor does he
discuss the issue with a representative panel of all major religions.

By doing so, his objective seems obvious—nothing will challenge his
initial thesis: "We atheists are right. There is no such thing as a
God. Religious people are totalitarian and ideologically-oriented.
Religions started the crusades and jihads and repress anyone who
doesn't believe in God."

Even if it is correct to say that religions start wars and inflict
human suffering, the film reduces this statement to its lowest level
and never mentions the word, much less the concept, of spirituality.
It excludes the fact that you can believe in a Supreme Being or Force
without belonging to any religion. And that's probably the
unforgivable weakness of this documentary. It ends up as the biased
work of an atheist eager to poke fun at believers.

An example of this bias is when Professor Samuel has his interviewees
discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Bush
administration's foreign policy in a clearly anti-Israeli and anti-
American way. What this has to do with atheism, spirituality or even
a theological reflection on the meaning of life is anyone's guess.
The film devolves into a narrow pseudo-examination on possibly the
most intriguing issue of our time.

Pakistani-born Concordia Professor Julian Samuel should probably
enroll in some journalism classes to learn the basics of the craft.
He would learn about journalistic honesty or, as one of my
professors, Stephane Manier, used to say: "Verifying information and
presenting contradictory views are what differentiate journalism from
rumor, if not defamation."

Atheism - Written, Directed & Produced by Julian Samuel, Runtime: 72
min

Montreal Mirror, 30 November 2006:

God be damned

Julian Samuel’s Atheism is a densely theoretical attack on religion

MALCOLM FRASER

Local filmmaker Julian Samuel flies the flag for religious
nonbelievers in his challenging new documentary, simply titled
Atheism. Samuel caused a little stir in the documentary world a
couple of years ago when he slagged off Bowling for Columbine, The
Corporation and their pop-cultural ilk as intellectually lightweight.
As befits this perspective, Atheism is an extremely dense work devoid
of any fluff or comic relief.

Samuel lines up an assortment of thinkers to share their opinions on
the topic: activist and The Clash of Fundamentalisms author Tariq
Ali, former Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, novelist Alison
MacLeod, Queen’s philosophy prof Christine Overall and others. In
what can only be considered either a bold throwing down of the
gauntlet or a spectacularly ill-advised gesture of audience
alienation, Samuel begins the film with MacLeod reading a lengthy
excerpt from a book about physics. The subject matter is impenetrable
and the text full of jargon, besides which MacLeod is reading from
her lap, only occasionally glancing up at the camera.

From this peculiar opening salvo, Samuel dives into a rigorously
analytical assault on religion, mixing interview clips with
occasional personal reflections and assorted abstract or provocative
imagery. The film’s style veers from the obscurism of late Godard
(at one point, a quotation in black text is absurdly superimposed on
a mostly black background, making it impossible to read) to the
slapdash aesthetic of Ed Wood (during one of Ali’s interview
segments, he tilts his head, clearly revealing a doorknob gleaming in
the black background behind him). Since Samuel is an experienced
filmmaker (this is his fifth film since 1994), we have to assume
these odd choices are deliberate, but they’re still inexplicable.

Like Richard Dawkins’ much-discussed recent book The God Delusion,
Atheism makes not the slightest attempt to win over anyone who might
feel that there’s any validity to spiritual beliefs. Rather, it’s
an insiders’ discussion by, about and for atheist intellectuals. As
such, it contains a lot of interesting information and a few thought-
provoking insights. But the unrelenting density and the muddled style
might leave you feeling like the morning after a drunken
philosophical debate in university: moderately enlightened but
undeniably confused, and possibly with a bit of a headache.
Atheism opens this Friday, Dec. 1, 2006 at Ex-Centris

HOUR: 30 November 2006

God day afternoon
Melora Koepke

The anarchy of atheism

What if God was one of us, asks Julian Samuel in his new doc, Atheism

Montreal documentary-maker Julian Samuel has wisely discerned that
the time is ripe for an investigation into the question of the
existence of God and the place of His believers in the world.

Atheism is Samuel's investigation into the viability of religious
belief from both a cultural and a personal perspective. Its
collection of talking heads includes the authors of The Clash of
Fundamentalisms and The Wave Theory of Angels, a retired
astrophysicist from the Collège de France and the former Episcopal
bishop of Newark, among others. The experts are cut with various
dramatic visual effects, and the filmmaker offers a loose non-fiction
narrative in which, he promises, his own atheism will be interrogated.
"This film is a look at how an atheist like me becomes a religious
person," intones Samuel near the beginning of Atheism. If this
storyline sounds disingenuous, that's because it may well be. But
Samuel, admirably, has been a vociferous critic of the cut-and-slash
approach of documentarists like Michael Moore, who incite the public
to their facile conclusions with cheap, sexy tactics and lazy
analysis. Atheism is clearly not made for the same fans of reality
video who enjoy The Simple Life - in the first sequence, Samuel
allows an interviewee to read aloud from her book for several
minutes, in one long shot.

Though there is nothing wrong with letting a talking head talk for a
while, there's really no excuse for framing and lighting said talking
head so badly that the thing looks like it was shot as a high-school
social studies project from the '80s. In this day and age, there
really is no reason for a movie to be this messy.

Like it or not, film is a visual medium that should take into account
the people who are actually watching the film. Samuel is either
unfamiliar with film language or unwilling to engage with it, and
it's a shame, because this non-professionalism compromises his film.
Some of his on-camera shock techniques - including the opening
credits, which depict a hand tarring a Bible with the film's title
(and Samuel's own name, one letter at a time) - are laughable and
tedious. Others (clay statues smashed, the stained-glass window of a
cathedral shot with shaky-hand cam, condoms thrust next to an image
of the Pope) are downright infantile. Sadly, these unfortunate
details discredit the interesting points his interviewees make.

And when, near the end, it becomes apparent that the filmmaker's non-
faith remains unshaken after all, we are barely surprised.

Voir: 30 November 2006

http://www.voir.ca/cinema/cinema.aspx?iIDArticle=44943

Atheism

N. Wysocka

Après Save and Burn, qui traitait de ce qu'il avait surnommé la mort
des bibliothèques, le réalisateur montréalais Julian Samuel,
reconnu pour bousculer les convenances, revient à la charge avec un
documentaire portant cette fois sur la question de l'athéisme. Au
travers des témoignages livrés par des universitaires et des
penseurs, Samuel propose d'illustrer comment un athée devient
croyant. Bien que certains d'entre eux parviennent à soulever
quelques points de vue intéressants, le discours ampoulé qui
parsème cet Atheism risque de ne pas plaire à tout le monde. On
parvient néanmoins à oublier momentanément la réalisation
artisanale et le léger manque de rythme lorsqu'un physicien déclare
que le Big Bang n'a jamais eu lieu. Ah bon? À prendre... ou à laisser.

JOHN GRIFFIN

The Gazette

Friday, December 1, 2006

Julian Samuel's new documentary begins with a hand and a brush,
angrily stroking black paint on the printed pages of a book. Slowly
the letters form as the pages are turned, and the book becomes
familiar, as familiar as any book in the world. It is the Bible, and
the letters come together to form the title of the film - Atheism. It
is a typically inflammatory start for this city's most opinionated
firebrand, which makes the work to come all the more unusual. Over
the next 70 minutes, Samuel painstakingly interviews several world
authorities on science and organized religion to form a reasonably
balanced account of the ills wrought upon civilization by belief in a
single, omnipotent god.

They include writers like Tariq Ali, whose book, The Clash of
Fundamentalisms, might be written for the state of the world as the
sun comes up today.

The French scientist Jean-Claude Pecker reacts to religion with the
skepticism of his chosen profession, while journalist Fadi Hammoud
talks about the terrorist state in analogies involving lids on
pressure cookers, and their removal. Saddam Hussein's name will be
mentioned.

Christine Overall, a professor of philosophy at Queen's University,
describes the intellectual process that lead her away from the church
to atheism - she would come back happily if persuaded God existed;
and John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal bishop of Newark, N.J.,
speaks passionately and with wisdom about God as a mystery beyond
human comprehension.

Intercut like visual bottle rockets between these weighty talking
heads are Samuel's own impressions. A Bible page is entirely blacked
out. Black paint is shaped into delicate calligraphy, vortexes of
abstract expressionism, and lines on a road.

Church, temple and mosque icons are assessed monetary value; a
gorilla is repeatedly shown as a symbol of the recent Christian
right's embrace of Intelligent Design over Darwinism; the director
himself is seen standing in the shadow of a church, and, in archival
footage, announcing his own atheism over a home radio at the age of 16.

There are the outbursts expected of Samuel, our most professional
hothead and reliable thorn in the side of a real or imagined
establishment.
They throw a wrench into what is otherwise a reasoned report on
religion, one of the day's most pressing issues. They have not
affected the ultra-low budget film's ability to screen at the recent
Festival du nouveau cinema, or enjoy a commercial run at Ex-Centris
from today to Tuesday. It would be a shame if they hurt Atheism's
chances at a broader audience. The film deserves to be seen,
absorbed, and discussed, loudly, with arms waving.

Atheism
RATING 3
Documentary
Playing at: Ex-Centris cinema.
Parents' guide: shocking images.
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

JOHN GRIFFIN, The Gazette

Friday, December 2, 2006

This is #736 in a series about local artists who won’t take no for
an answer. Julian Samuel is a documentary filmmaker, author and
painter whose new film Atheism is playing at Ex-Centris through
Tuesday. Writer-director Benjamin P. Paquette’s first fiction
feature A Year in the Death of Jack Richards is playing Cinéma du
Parc until Thursday. By any conventional form of logic, neither
should ever have seen the light of day. Atheism is Samuel’s third
doc, after 2002’s The Library in Crisis and Save and Burn, in 2004.
For some reason, his story about the role of organized religion in
the ruinization of the world as we know it was rejected by various
funding agencies, seven times running. Undeterred, he carried on.
“The funding enterprises were useless,” says Samuel, who has been
known to speak his mind. “So I made it myself, with a digital
camera, for less than $8,000.” Samuel was blessed that many of the
people he wanted to speak to either lived within easy travel range,
or happened to pass through town. All offer reasoned arguments,
augmented by the director’s own, more volatile, artistic gestures.
The first, and most controversial, is an opening sequence where he
writes the film’s title in black paint on the pages of the Bible.
“It’s not been a problem in Canada, and especially not in Quebec,
where the claws of God haven’t ripped out the intestines of society.
But American distributors say it’s too confrontational. I’ll have
a hard time getting it shown there.”

Atheism : quand le spirituel déprime

Anabelle Nicoud

La Presse, 2 December 2006

Collaboration spéciale

* 1/2 - Atheism, documentaire de Julian Samuel.

Quelle place occupe Dieu dans le monde, la philosophie, la politique?
L'athéisme est-il une religion?

Un documentaire prétentieux et vain. On est loin de la révolution
copernicienne.

Big Bang, monothéisme, agnosticisme, créationnisme, darwinisme,
éloge de la raison, croisades et impérialisme, religion, arts et
sciences. Après les grandes bibliothèques (Save and Burn), le
réalisateur montréalais Julian Samuel aborde pêle-mêle ces sujets
dans son dernier documentaire, Atheism. L'auteur du Clash des
fondamentalismes Tariq Ali, le journaliste spécialiste du Moyen-
Orient Fadi Hammoud, l'astrophysicien Jean-Claude Pecker, l'évêque
de Newark John Shelby Spong, répondent, entre autres, aux questions
(méta)-physiques du réalisateur. Indigeste? Oui, sur le fond, d'une
superficialité époustouflante, comme sur la forme, d'une prétention
incroyable. Tel un adolescent dissertant la spiritualité au troquet
du coin, Julian Samuel amène ses interviewés à ouvrir des portes
pourtant ouvertes avant lui. Rien de neuf dans les exposés oraux de
M. Pecker sur le Big Bang comme version scientifique du fiat lux de
la Bible ou les développements de Noomane Raboudi sur les
«croisades» modernes de l'ami W en Irak comme résurgence des
croisades chrétiennes du Moyen-Âge.

Ne comptons pas sur les effets visuels pour sauver le film. Pour ne
pas sombrer pendant Atheism, il faut passer outre les essais
prétendument artistiques et supposément choquants du réalisateur.
Et pourtant... faire d'une séance de «Bible painting» un
générique est pompeux plus que subversif. Quant au visage du pape
Pie XII auréolé de capotes, l'idée pourrait être intéressante si
elle était sous-tendue ou justifiée par le propos, ce qui est loin
d'être le cas. Que le réalisateur joue avec la fonction zoom d'une
caméra n'a rien de très trippant pour le spectateur. Pas plus que
les effets de type «flou sur les gros plan, mise au point à
l'arrière», procédé qui évoque plus la maladresse des films de
famille qu'une démarche cinématographique, documentaire ou
fictionnelle. On ne sait trop si le réalisateur oublie volontairement
de mentionner qui sont ses intervenants quand ils apparaissent pour
la première fois dans le film ou si cela procède là encore d'une
démarche (mais dans quel but, si ce n'est de semer son
spectateur...). Ce qui rend ce film méprisable n'est pas tant que
l'on n'y apprend rien de neuf, mais plutôt la façon dont ce rien de
neuf est emballé: c'est pédagogiquement nul et
cinématographiquement pédant. Tant mieux si le réalisateur s'est
amusé, car nous, on s'est plutôt mortellement emmerdés.

Le Devoir, 1 December 2006,

Odile Tremblay: “Croire ou ne pas croire”

Réalization et scénario: Julian Samuel. A Ex-Centris.

L’athéisme est un sujet en or, insuffisamment exploré au
documentaire ces temps-ci alors qu’il y aurait tant à en dire. Aux
Etats-Unis, s’avouer athée et se réveler non pratiquant ferme
désormais les portes des fonctions politiques. Les théories
évolutioniniste de Darwin se heurtent au créationnisme, si populaire
chez nos voisins du Sud. L’athéisme est en position de recul en
Amérique du Nord, sauf au Québec.

Le documentariste montréalais Julian Samuel s’est
attaqué à la question, interrogeant croyants, philosophes et
théologiens de toutes les doctrines, athée et agnostiques. Il en
résulte une bonne syntése qui renovie bien entendu dos à dos
adeptes de la foi et mécréants convaincus.

Sur le plan technique, la caméra de Samuel manque de tenue
et vire souvent dans le flou. Ce film montre surtout des têtes
parlantes, mais quand le cinéaste y greffe des images plus
symboliques (dunes de sable, taches d’encre, etc), le resultat
n’apparaît guère adroit. Le fait que des condoms se superposent à
une photo de Pie XII ne choquera plus grand monde aujourd’hui.

“Athéisme” vaut surtout par ses questionnements.
L’astrophysicien Jean-Claude Pecker explique à quel point la
théorie du big bang fut récupérée à des fins créationistes. Le
journaliste Fadi Hammoud rappelle que l’athéisme a également
émergé des communautés islamistes. L’évêque de Newark John
Shelby Spong estime qu’il faudrait cesser d’opposer science et foi
car l’une complète l’autre. La philosophe Christine Overall
démontre que les valeurs morales n’émanent pas davantage des
sociétés religieuses que des régime non croyants.

Bref, de telles discussions par entrevues interposées se
révèlent toujours passionnantes, même lorsqu’elles apparaissent
forcément partielles. Encore que la dimension spirituelle des
religions semble un peu évacuée ici, au profit des méfaits de
l’aspect “opium de peuple”: guerres, inquisitions, etc.

The McGill Daily, 12 February 2007

Local filmmaker puts a nail in God’s coffin
Talking heads deny the divine in an unabashedly propagandistic
documentary
By Josh Ginsberg, Culture Writer

Clergy, pull up the drawbridge: a Montreal filmmaker has launched a
frontal assault on religion.

Atheism, Julian Samuel’s newest documentary, pits God against the
academy by lining up a cadre of intellectuals to deny the deity.
Lacking a coherent narrative, the film builds a free-form argument by
knitting together snippets from a battery of interviews. This leaves
viewers with plenty to digest, but the audience’s degree of
tolerance for talking heads will ultimately determine whether the
experience is fascinating or flat.

Despite its cerebral tone, Samuel thinks of his film as a searing
indictment of “the virus of religion” for its inconsistencies,
hypocrisies, and violence. And he has no pretensions to fairness: but
one proponent of faith, the former Bishop of New Jersey, gets an
opportunity to make his case on film, and only, Samuel confides, to
show that even rational people cling to ideas of the divine. For all
the academic exposition, balanced debate is simply not on the agenda.

“Fuck that,” says Samuel. “I’m not going to balance anything
at all. If you want balance, if you want the illusion of balance, you
go to the conventional, you go to the state CBC and the other
buffoons. Me, my documentary is presenting an attack on the idea of
God.”

So be it. It’s certainly true that mainstream work on the subject
prefers the dumbed-down and easily digestible to substance and
controversy. Take, for instance, Barbara Walters’s 2005 piece
“Heaven – What is it? How do we get there?” a hackneyed pastiche
that reduces ideas to a collection of embroidered samplers. From this
point of view, Atheism is a refreshingly deep, if unapologetically
propagandistic, grapple with God.

Interviewees offering insightful colloquies include authors Tariq Ali
(Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity) and Alison
MacLeod (The Wave Theory of Angels), as well as Queen’s philosophy
professor Christine Overall, among others. Although Samuel marshals
practitioners of science, philosophy, and literature to make his
case, the thrust of his engagement with atheism is undoubtedly
political, focusing on the socially oppressive elements of religious
belief and the horrors committed in its name. Thoughtful people will
appreciate most of this analysis, but may roll their eyes when it
doesn’t seem to fit. For instance, we get some vague musings on the
chestnut without which no leftist oeuvre would be complete: the
Israel-Palestine conflict. Although Samuel claims his film defies
convention by critically tackling the Middle East, it falls short in
its attempt to fully integrate Israel-Palestine into the discussion
of atheism.

Samuel says he wanted to create a form that “goes down and sticks
somewhere in the throat.” A few weeks after seeing the film, he
hopes the audience will still be coughing up chunks for further
inspection. To this end, some jarring images pepper the sanguine
narrative, starting with the film’s title being splashed across the
pages of a bible in black paint.

Based on the opening, I expected Atheism’s imagery to be full of
shockers like, say, someone washing their armpits with holy water.
Instead, it intersperses interviews with interpretive fare that
sometimes complement the discussion, and sometimes regresses into
corny computer-generated effects. And the visuals, like the
interviews, remain limited to the Abrahamic religions, especially
Christianity and Islam. Although Samuel says that a shoestring budget
prevented him from branching out, the lack of attention to Eastern
religions like Hinduism and Buddhism undermines the atheist
challenge. To make his argument cut as deep as he wanted, Samuel
should have tackled not only institutionalized religious practice,
but spirituality more generally.

Although Atheism gives God a good run for his money, the film’s
polemical style makes it unlikely to win converts among the devout.
It exhorts its viewers against religion, yet still preaches a gospel.
Like many sermons, it is alternately a little tedious, sometimes
eyebrow raising, but thought provoking enough to make it worth
sitting through.

Atheism will be screened at the Cinematheque Quebecoise (335 de
Maisonneuve East) on February 16. For showtime and ticket information
check cinematheque.qc.ca.

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