Pray: Evoking An Epiphany With A Documentary Film Without Using Words 

Research Statement

Research question

How do you make a persuasive argument in a documentary film without using words, to evoke an epiphany among viewers?

Context

Pray (Gallefoss 2017) is an observational, poetic, documentary film in which people from different parts of the world are filmed while praying. The film has no added music, interviews, or voice over. The prayers are neither translated, nor subtitled. The pace and narrative of the editing are slow and meditative, to allow room for the audience’s own reflections and observations. 

The idea for Pray came to me when I was directing a journalistic documentary series for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. I was there to film how the organization Save the Children used local mullahs in their work to promote women’s rights. When the mullahs performed the Muslim prayer Salah during the afternoon break, their praying faces reminded me of the Christian missionaries praying at a Lutheran Hospital in Tanzania whom I had filmed the previous month. Growing up in an atheist, Norwegian family, I held a tolerant view toward religion, but I was also skeptical because of the ways in which religion was used as a political tool to divide people: for instance, in Afghanistan. I had an epiphany. In many conflicts, religion is used to divide and separate people, but although they are worshipping different deities, the spirituality of praying human beings seemed to come from the same place in our soul and consciousness: What divides us, makes us alike. I decided to make an artistic documentary in which I would try to evoke the same epiphany among viewers. 

In his 1993 collection of essays Genealogies of Religion, Talal Asad provides an anthropological framework for the study of prayer. Drawing on the pioneering sociological writings of Émile Durkheim, Asad distinguishes between communal prayer and prayer as a private practice. Gathering for communal prayer—such as congregational prayers in Islam, Christian church services, or Hindu pujas—foster a sense of community and shared belief among practitioners. In Pray, I wanted to focus on both private and communal prayer, showing both the psychological and sociological roles the ritual plays. 

Asad also emphasizes, with reference to the work of Marcel Mauss, that prayer is an embodied practice, involving specific physical actions (such as bowing, kneeling, or raising hands). These physical aspects of prayer are seen across many religious traditions, indicating a shared understanding of the importance of the body in spiritual practice.

I believe precisely that at the bottom of all our mystical states, there are body techniques which we have not studied, but which were studied fully in China and India, even in very remote periods. This socio-psycho-biological study should be made. I think there are necessarily biological means of entering into communion with God. (Mauss 1973, p86)

However, Asad is critical of any universalist approach that seeks to homogenize prayer practices across religions. He argues that the meaning and significance of prayer can only be fully understood within its specific cultural and historical context. As a filmmaker, I respect these scholarly reservations against homogenizing attempts. It is only natural that an anthropological study comparing rituals and traditions will include and highlight differences in both practice and cultural context. But Pray was to be a subjective work of art, not an empirical, anthropological study of rituals in various religions. It was also meant to be part of a larger conversation—a conversation in which many politicians and religious leaders focus on differences to create division. This film would accept and respect differences,  but highlight similarities, with the aim of evoking an epiphany among viewers. 

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1991) emphasizes the importance of epiphanies in the creative process, describing them as moments of profound insight and clarity that often occur during the state of “flow,” in which individuals experience their most optimal and creative mental state. By making a documentary with a persuasive argument—but without using words—I aimed to put the audience into this state of flow; here, I wanted the idea to develop independently in the viewers’ own reflections, rather than being elaborated as a verbal argument by me as a filmmaker. To achieve this self-realization within the viewer, I decided that the film should combine poetic and observational modes, as described in New Documentary (Bruzzi 2006) and Introduction to Documentary (Nichols 2017). As Nichols (2017) states,

The poetic mode is particularly adept at opening the possibilities of alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the pursuit of a particular argument or point of view or the presentation of reasoned propositions about problems in need of solution. This mode stresses mood, tone, and affect much more than display of factual knowledge or acts of rhetorical persuasion. (p. 116)

The potential offered by the poetic mode to use film techniques, editing styles, and tone to convey alternative forms of knowledge suited my aim to have viewers reach an epiphany, rather than delivering it as a verbal argument in the film. 

The observational mode’s un-commented rendition of pieces of reality also aligned with my ambition to make a persuasive argument without using words. An observational film that inspired me during the development phase was Philip Gröning’s (2005) portrayal of the spirituality of Carthusian monks in Die grosse Stille. The mood and pacing of his film create a meditative atmosphere in the cinema and within the audience that I sought to emulate in Pray. I was also inspired by how Thomas Balmès showed differences and similarities between babies on four continents in his (2010) observational documentary Bebés. In this film, everyday activities such as children playing are edited together in a way that powerfully illustrates similarities between human beings growing up in four different cultures.

In developing Pray’s editing style, I was inspired by the classical ideas of Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein’s (1949) view that “montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots wherein  each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other” (p. 37) was the theoretical framework informing my decision to edit people with different religious backgrounds together in montages that underlined their similarities. I also watched avant-garde symphony films such as Alberto Cavalcanti’s (1926) Rien que les Heures and Walter Ruttmann’s (1927) Berlin—Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, to seek inspiration in documentary films made before synchronized sound recordings of spoken words.

The theoretical background for Pray’s slow-paced editing was informed by slow cinema, as described in Paul Schrader’s (1972) book Transcendental Style in Films. Transcendental style refers to a particular filmmaking approach that often explores spirituality, characterized by its minimalist and contemplative qualities. I chose slow pacing to create room for the audiences’ own reflections, with the goal of giving them the opportunity to reach their own conclusions—and, in some cases, an epiphany.

Methods

Pray  (2017) was funded by the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) as part of their program Nye Veier (New Roads), in which directors were given extensive artistic freedom and encouraged to experiment. Artistic research was the focus of a series of workshops in the program, where directors came together to elaborate on their projects and artistic processes. What made Nye Veier stand out in contrast to many development programs was that it funded the films selected for the program with GBP 120,000. Securing funding in the early idea phase provided a safe and fruitful arena for artistic bravery. This allowed me—a director with a background in documentary series—to explore new skill sets and make an artistic documentary for a festival audience that would not have television remote controls in hand. Instead of the usual documentary development phase with research, test filming, and treatment writing, I decided to make a full-length test version of the film so that I could develop the experimental editing style. Although I knew that the film should be a poetic documentary with stylistic elements from the observational mode, I wanted to use the pilot to test the weighting of these modes.

In order to ensure that the team shared my stylistic vision and followed it on sets where we often needed to be silent and discreet, I described the film’s cinematographical DNA in a set of dogmas. These included the following: 

• To enforce the meditative, poetic style, the camera should always be on a tripod without camera movement.

• To give us freedom regarding pacing in the editing room, all images should be filmed for a long duration. 

• To make the edit fluid between locations, and to create the feeling of similarities between religions, we will never edit together two shots from the same location. 

• To underline the similarities, we will develop a set of signature images that we will film at all locations (e.g., symmetric totals, half-totals, and close-ups); we will also film tableaus of rituals that are similar between the different religions (e.g., the lighting of candles or singing). 

Although I had planned to make a poetic, wordless documentary, it felt unnerving to travel to Jerusalem and the West Bank without my usual journalistic toolbox of words. The trip took place early in the development phase and would consume a substantial part of the film’s budget. I did not yet have confidence in the experimental style of Pray. As what in retrospect could be described as a safety net, we spent two of the days in Jerusalem with a  teenage Jewish girl and a teenage Muslim boy. We interviewed them about religion and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we followed them as they lived their everyday life in the shadow of that conflict. In the editing room for the test version, I needed to make a decision: Should I use the interviews and translate their prayers for peace, or should I follow my original vision? When I reflected on my initial aim for the film, the answer was obvious. To have a fully funded experimental artistic documentary was a unique opportunity. I would not trade that for the safety of spoken words. 

The development phase culminated in a full-scale viewing of the test film in a cinema in Bergen, Norway. This allowed us to test the film’s style and pacing, and to explore whether I had reached my aim of conveying a persuasive, wordless argument in a documentary film. This was confirmed in the Q & A after the film, in which many in the audience described their own epiphanies. 

Since we had filmed extensively—and used half of the film’s total budget—in the development phase, the production phase was shorter. We filmed for 10 days in different locations in India. Because I was filming a documentary series on the refugee crisis in the same period, I was also able to do additional filming for Pray in Greece, Gambia, Niger, and Lebanon.

Outcomes

Pray had an international festival run in the winter of 2017/2018, premiering at festivals on four continents. My editor, Christian Dahl, won a prize for best editing at the Bengaluru International Film Festival in India: That a film inspired more by poetic associations than act-structure won an award for best editing was inspirational. In addition to traditional festivals, special screenings across Norway were arranged by interreligious organizations. The film was also bought by the Norwegian Public Library’s free streaming service Filmbib.no and is frequently used in schools. 

For me, as a director, it was a learning experience to work with the toolboxes of the poetic and observational modes and slow cinema. The artistic research I had conducted with Pray influenced my documentary series Flukt (Gallefoss 2017) about the refugee crisis. To reach a broad television audience, I could not make Flukt a poetic, wordless documentary; however, in parts, I slowed the pace of editing and removed the words. These scenes—for instance, of refugees being saved in the Mediterranean, walking ashore in Lesbos, crossing a border in Slovenia, or simply waiting in Norway—heightened Flukt’s emotional impact, making it the most-winning documentary series at the Norwegian television awards, Gullruten. 

Impact

The film was distributed through NFI’s distribution channels, but in retrospect, we should maybe have collaborated with an experienced international distributor to increase our festival outcome even further. The film’s length, at 39 minutes, was also a challenge for some festivals. Although I may have wished for an even broader festival outreach, the audience reception at festivals on four continents was heartwarming. It was clear that the persuasive, wordless argument of “what divides us, makes us alike” resonated within many in the audience. Moreover, as part of the Bergen International Film Festival’s (BIFF) school program, Pray was screened in in the festival’s school program for 2,200 teenagers. Although the film’s style differed substantially from the content the teenagers usually consume, the Q & As proved that at least some of them had reached an epiphany while watching the film. 

However, by choosing an observational mode and presenting the rituals without verbal explanation, I limited the viewers’ ability to contextualize and understand the characters’ inner state. An example of this is a shot from early in the film, where Mohammad, a Pakistani living in Norway, begins to cry while waiting for the Friday prayer in Bergen Mosque. In the development phase, I interviewed Mohammad about his tears. I then showed the clip of him crying to my fellow directors in Nye Veier, asking them, “Do you want to know why Muhammed is crying?” An informal show of hands showed a 50–50 split between those who wanted to know and those who did not: an example of the subjectivity of art appreciation. But when I asked them why they thought Mohammad was crying, all had theories—and most of their theories were more interesting than Mohammad`s own explanation. Since my aim with Pray was to evoke independent epiphanies within the audience, I stayed with my original intention, leaving the interview out of the film.

The film’s style was developed based on esthetic and artistic criteria, and it is a cinematic—not anthropological—study of religion. An educated viewer will recognize for instance Hindus by the river Ganges, Muslims doing Salah, and Tibetan Buddhist monks, but many viewers will be left guessing. However, if the film had explanatory texts each time it changed setting, the marathon of reading this would require would impede the viewer from reaching a state of flow.

Choosing the observational mode, and not translating the prayers, also limited the opportunity to examine and explore the sociological, cultural, and political aspects of religion. One could argue that Pray might have had a stronger political impact if spoken words had been used. In one of the images in the film, Israeli Jews are celebrating Sukkot by singing and dancing in the congregation hall of the Cave of the Patriarchs. In 1994, this room was the scene of a massacre, when the Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslims during the Friday prayer, in what was then still a mosque. This was part of the escalation of violence leading up to the failure of the Oslo Peace Process. A film using verbal narration, or interviews could have provided context. And a scene in which Israeli soldiers refuse Palestinians access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque was also difficult to understand without words. As a documentary filmmaker whose background is in factual documentary series that have sparked debate and raised awareness—and sometimes led to real change—it was a sacrifice to leave these parts of the film on the editing room floor. 

As an experimental, wordless documentary with a poetic approach, Pray presents a challenge to its audience. Like much art, it may not align with every viewer’s preference. The audience is used to understanding and being entertained by movies. The lack of translated words leave much of the interpretation to the viewer, and the pacing tests the audience’s patience. But my aim was never to make a broad film that as many viewers as possible would understand and like. My aim was to experiment artistically so that Pray would have a deep impact on some viewers. Through its poetic and deliberately slow montage of people’s spirituality, the film silently conveys an argument: What divides us, makes us alike. Pray facilitates moments of deep reflection and allows some of its viewers to achieve a state of flow. Its ability to resonate deeply with a diverse audience around the world gives it a profound personal impact. And, in some instances, it even triggers moments of epiphany. 

Bibliography

Asad, T. (1993) Genealogies of religion—discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: John Hopskins University Press.

Bruzzi, S. (2006) New documentary (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

Durkheim, É. (2008). The elementary forms of religious life (C. Cosman, Trans.). Oxford University Press. 

Nichols, B. (2017) Introduction to documentary (3rd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2(1), 70-88.

Brewster, B (1979) Sociology and psychology: essays. London: Routledge.

Schrader, P. (1970) Transcendental style in film. Oakland: University of California Press.

Eisenstein, S. (1949) Film form—essays in film theory. Edited and translated by Jay Leyda, San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and World. 

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins. 

Gibbs, J. (2002) Mise-en-scene: film style and interpretation. New York: Wallflower Press.

Orden, V. (2003) Film editing: the art of the expressive. New York:  : Wallflower Press.

Acknowledgements

A documentary film is a collaborative work of art. When I, as a director, wanted to explore the genre, I relied on a committed team with artistic curiosity. I developed the film’s visual style with the dedication of film photographers Anders Hereid and Vegard Lund Bergheim, and the slow pace montage style editing with editor Christian Dahl. Sound is an essential part of the rituals of prayer, and sound engineer August Sandberg captured it on various sets around the world and made it flourish in postproduction. For a director to be able to show artistic bravery, a courageous producer and production company are needed. Producer Ida Kleppe and CEO of Pandora Film, Morten Offerdal, gave me room to explore. As written in the research statement, the movie was made possible by the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) Nye veier. A special thanks to decision makers Kari Moen Kristiansen and KriStine Ann Skaret, and advisors Bjørn Arne Odden and Eva Færevaag. I would also like to thank Vice Dean AR&RD Nina Grünfeld and professor Audun Engelstad from Høgskolen i Innlandet for valuable input on my research statement.

Peer Reviews

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response to what follows

Review 1: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

“Pray” is a medium length documentary that centers on individuals from diverse backgrounds worldwide as they engage in prayer. The style of this documentary is poetic and observational focusing only on these characters and observing the details of the people and the space at praying time, without the use of any narration or dialogue. Even the words of the actual prayer are not translated and are used as an environment sound for the film. This poetic style makes the documentary really strong visually and helps the audience to observe and focus on the details of the image. The director has used very beautiful images and discusses, in a poetic way, about the similarities in the rituals, movements, faces of the religion globally creating a strong impact. 

Although, the documentary has very strong images and a very interesting style, I believe that the duration is quite long and after a while it repeats itself. This documentary can really work visually if the director chooses to make it into a short film documentary and take out some of the scenes, especially in the middle without trimming any shots. Regarding the research statement, the author is focusing on the practical details and on the decisions that he had to take while creating this specific documentary. In addition, he discusses other films that impacted him and briefly talks about the poetic style of documentaries in general. 

First of all, the research statement needs changes in the structure, but it also needs a more careful writing because it has spelling and grammar issues. It’s really important that the author describes his creative process in the creation of this documentary, but he needs to focus a bit more in theory around the actual topic itself. What is the social mechanism of prayer? Is there a global communication? How do the rituals connect or differentiate with each religion? Is there a way that we can talk about a global language? The author can use the above arguments to create a theoretical framework of his documentary and he can then explain and focus on the actual stages of creating the documentary. This is very important in order to proceed to the main core of the reason and the impact of this specific work. Also, a good idea is for the author to focus a bit on the space of prayer and the creation of an alternative space with different social contracts. 

As a conclusion, I recommend this work for publication but the author has to re-examine and restructure his research statement in order to be ready for publication. 

Review 2: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement

This is a beautifully shot observational documentary that visually explores the practice of prayer around the world, laying out an observational, inter-faith canvas for audiences to be moved through. The communication of the various global expressions of prayer, including the film’s aims to observe similarities in the expressive elements of these inner states made for an interesting watch, and provide an original and engaging piece of observational documentary practice. 

The author states their aim with the work is to create an observational film that argues for the shared underpinnings of prayer, and fostering ‘the same epiphany’ as them on the shared nature of prayer, and put them in a ‘state of flow’. These act as a good starting point for more development and discussion, however also potentially offer issues around understanding the success of achieving the aims. It was also interesting to read of the intention of the author to also offer up space to an audience to view and interpret the material in an individual way, to create a film that ‘could develop independently in the audience's own reflections, instead of being elaborated as a verbal argument by me as a filmmaker’. However, this, as well as the multivocal nature of observational filmmaking, and context driven, individual experience of religion, prayer and belief, could somewhat be understood to be at odds with the original stated project aims of eliciting the same epiphany in the audience as the filmmaker. There was potential to unpack this more in the written work, and be more open to thinking of the project as exploring the potential of observational documentary film practice to observe, and communicate interior, individual processes such as prayer through focusing on their actions. Arguably the chosen approach of observational practice is limited in its ability to communicate this inner state, especially without the fuller development of individuals and characters. Furthermore, without more social and cultural context and understanding how much of the religious practice in inflected by demands of the faiths, it could be argued it is hard for a many viewers to interpret what they are viewing beyond the superficial observation of the prayer practice. The project does however open up the possibility of discussion and exploring these themes more, and as no doubt the filmmaker acquired extensive knowledge through the impressive process of production, and subsequent presenting of the film in festival and cinema contexts, no doubt there is more there for them to elaborate on.

The written statement also touched on some observational film theory, but somewhat dismisses aspects as ‘high-flying theories on modes’ at the same time. Which felt like a missed opportunity to develop the praxis of the project, and explore the specifics of what is an interesting underpinning question of the potential of documentary practice to explore prayer and inner states in a global context. This also highlights the scope to revisit the research and scholarly engagement beyond the specifics of documentary studies scholars such as Nichols and Bruzzi, especially given the literatures in observational practice, and fields such as the anthropology of religion which potentially speak well with the project. They also potentially would help to explore the author’s original aims when linked with their practice discussion. The exploration of the evolution of the project, including its financing and production, was interesting, and provides useful insight these processes and how they were able to provide a path through to create a film of this nature. Overall the reviewer felt it was stylistically a very accomplished piece of practice, with a plenty of scope to continue to develop accompanying written work and a very interesting practice based inquiry. 

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response