Paul Schraeder on film and spirituality:

I think film is one of the most difficult to be used in a spiritual manner because it is so kinetic, so visceral. If you're going to do something spiritual, it usually involves slowing life down, and it's kind of hard to slow something down that moves at 24 frames per second.

Mr. Schraeder grew up in the strict Calvinist culture and had never watched a movie until he was seventeen. Most of his films have a kind of deep spirituality in them, the kind that doesn't just accept dogma as it was fed down your throat. He asks, he questions. Never mind that people take him for some devil worshipper and whose soul was burning in hell for depicting Jesus as human (in Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ"). His films also had lonely strangers sulking in their rooms, roaming the city streets at night and later erupting in pure violent rage like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver." I like the way that he sees redemption in whatever he does. If I can do even a quarter or a little ounce of what he can, I'll be very happy.