About

Burning Heart

”This word in my heart is like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” —Jeremiah, the broken-hearted prophet (628 BC)

Current productions

Our inaugural production, the award-winning short documentary, Laundry and Tosca, (2004) still finds robust use in colleges and graduate school settings after a rich festival, broadcast, and alternative distribution life. Events surrounding its primary theme of what it means to follow a soul calling have been in frequent demand. In 2008 we released a feature-length documentary entitled The Fair Trade that is concerned with what a meaningful life looks like and how to find one. The Fair Trade also had a very vibrant festival and broadcast life, and is still in festivals and screening events. The Fair Trade has found surprising distribution opportunities including being the launch film for a special partnership between Warner, Ryko, and Filmbaby called “Powerful Films.” In addition to receiving widespread brick and mortar distribution as well as online distribution, the film has just entered a new broadcast relationship in the U.K. and will screen in regular rotation there in 2011.

We’re in postproduction on the Tony Hale-starring feature Not That Funny, produced by Boulevard Pictures, and are in preproduction on a dramatic feature entitled Praying the Hours that investigates what kind of life happens when normal life is fractured by great suffering, loss, or true love. Praying the Hours uses as a structural element the idea of the Benedictine hours of prayer to tell the stories of eight intertwined people whose lives have reached that place, in one form or another, where they can’t live according to the wristwatch anymore and are forced to enter a new way of being. It’s a totally new paradigm shift in filmmaking for us, so we are very excited to see how things are developing.

We have several other projects in various stages of development: two completed scripts on the story of Auguste Rodin and the Burghers of Calais; in preproduction   on a feature with the working title Regarding the Holidays to be shot in Indiana over the winter of 2011-12 (screenplay by award-winning playwright Jonathan Foster and starring Tony Hale); and in research and development stages of a feature biopic telling the story of one of the founding mothers of our country. We are also involved in an ongoing series of events pairing our films with various combinations of film screenings, music, social activism awareness, and public speaking at film festivals, panels, conferences, colleges, summits, churches, and professional and private environments.

The consistent element is that our films consider issues that deeply impact us individually and collectively.

Primary outlets for screenings and events

Our films can be viewed on theater screens, televisions, computer screens, or on iPhones, but they have also generated screening events that apply in many situations like colleges, conferences, big churches, home groups—anywhere people are interested in considering some of these greater issues together.

With Laundry and Tosca, that has had surprising success in the shape of a screening, a mini-concert with Ms. Whitehead, and speaker Lauralee Farrer. This has lasted long after the first year or two of normal festival screenings and broadcast. Similarly with The Fair Trade we have had combinations of screenings and speeches by Lauralee Farrer or Burning Heart partner and fair trade entrepreneur Tamara Johnston McMahon, often with accompanying fair trade co-op sales. This is alongside the festivals, commercial distribution, theatrical, foreign, broadcast and digital downloads that make film accessible in many different formats.