And with one question from the audience during the Q&A following the world premiere of “Our House” at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival, someone popped the bubble.
The question in particular explicitly revealed that the anarchist Christians running their own illegal homeless shelter in Williamsburg had complicit permission in using their building from the owner: not exactly the definition of “squatting” like the description of “Our House” promised, and not very “anarchistic” either. Christian? Sure.
But I’m getting ahead of myself: “Our House” is a short documentary about a few young men who decide to operate their own homeless outreach community in an abandoned Williamsburg warehouse. They’re vegan, Christians, dread-locked punk rockers with plugs in their ears and pray inside a heated “love tent.” (I’m sure they are inspired by Shane Claiborne’s “The Irresistible Revolution,” but that’s never expressed in the film).
For non-religious types, they probably saw this film as a sad period piece about (barely) pre-gentrification W-burg, and the relationship communities have with their physical homes. As a Christian, I found the film to be extremely inspiring, watching these guys attempt to live alongside the suffering street people stuck in endless cycles of anger, drugs and crime. They prayed openly and intimately inside their “love tent,” often embracing afterwards: I wish I had that kind of spiritual connection to others when I finished praying alongside them. Maybe Grace Toronto should erect it’s own “love tent” for prayer meetings.
I don’t know if anybody is shocked by the dread-locked punk rocker aspect of the Christians in the movies: Christian punk is fairly mainstream, and while these guys looked pretty edgy on screen, they really don’t look much different than the kids who come home from Christian wakeboarding camps at the end of the summer.
I could also be desensitized to the image of weirdo hardcore Christians: I’ll admit to being one myself (both a Christian and a weirdo), as I have attended late night punk shows at the Bohemian Penguin in Belleville shouting along to a hardcore version of “Our God is an Awesome God” and have paid witness to Belleville’s own dreadlocked baptist rastafarian, Jah Pickney.
As for the Christian Anarchy angle of the movie, I’m afraid that it’s under-represented in the documentary as well. I was disappointed with that because I do have a few “Christian Anarchy” books on my shelf, and was looking for an interesting portrayal of this fringe denomination on screen. Maybe I’ll save it for my own documentary someday.