The name has several layers of meaning, but the one that most eloquently describes all of us is from a quote from Jeremiah (628 BC). Known as “the broken-hearted prophet,” he determined to stop talking about things God was nagging him about; in fact, he swore he was never going to mention God's name again. But then, he says, “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.”

Those of us most closely linked with Burning Heart Productions have had shipwrecks that have landed us on shores we never anticipated. We try to tell the stories that burn most brightly and insistently in our hearts. Jeremiah’s words are actually on our business cards—thousands of years after he is gone, the fire keeps burning. That’s an image of legacy that we embrace.

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 is still in festivals and screening events and has found surprising distribution opportunities. Our award-winning short documentary, Laundry and Tosca, is very vibrant with whole events surrounding its primary theme of what it means to follow a soul calling, and is still in robust use five years after its completion. We’re 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 script development on a romantic comedy called Not That Funny (screenplay by award-winning playwright Jonathan Foster and starring Tony Hale); and half a dozen ideas in nascent stages of scripting including 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, but may not be in the current marketplace of ideas. Each story determines whether it ends up as a documentary, a narrative feature, or even a more epic-length endeavor such as one project that requires two completely different scripts set 500 years apart. Two projects are so rigorous, they are being written as books first (one fiction, one non-fiction), just to provide the kind of depth of engagement that the scripts deserve.

Our films can be viewed on theater screens, televisions, computer screens, or on iPhones, but they also are of a nature that they generate what we used to call in the 60s “happenings.” As screening “events,” they can apply in a lot of 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. We began to notice a trend—starting with film festival Q&A sessions—that the film generated questions questions like: What does it mean to pursue your dreams? What does it sound like to be “called by God”? What does it cost to say “yes”? What unconventional dividends does it pay? What kind of life does it give you in the process—is it worth the price? We have done this event all over the country now to very high praise, but what’s more important is that audiences want to talk about what it means to their own lives and communities.

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, with and without accompanying fair trade co-op sales. This is alongside the festivals, commercial distribution, theatrical, foreign, broadcast and digital downloads that make film accessible in so many different formats. All our films—even our narrative features—investigate issues that have implications for the way we live. We’ve found that people want to get together to view them and discuss what it means to us as a community. That’s what interests us—influencing the greater conversation.