NOTE: This interview originally ran during Sundance 2007. We're running it again now because For the Bible Tells Me So opens October 5 in New York City, before going on to play in over 40 markets.

For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary showing at the Sundance Film Festival, explores the issue of religion and homosexuality through personal interviews with five families whose spiritual lives collided with their real lives when they learned a loved one was gay. Director Daniel Karslake and Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man to be elected Bishop of the Episcopalian Church, were on-hand for the fest, and sat down with Cinematical for a chat about the film.

NOTE: This review originally ran during Sundance 2007. We're running it again now, because the film opens on Friday, October 5 in New York, before expanding through October and November to over 40 markets.

"The Bible is the word of God through the word of human beings, speaking in the idiom of their time,and the richness of the Bible comes from the fact that we don't take it as literally so that it was dictated by God." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

The last few years have brought some important documentaries: Alex Gibney's Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room, Amy Berg's Deliver Us from Evil; and Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, just to name a few. 2007 is young, but Sundance is always a great opportunity to sample the documentary waters, and my favorite doc at Sundance this year was For the Bible Tells Me So, an exploration of the religious right's use of the Bible to justify shutting homosexuals out of the faiths in which they've grown up.

The Toronto International Film Festival is over, we have a couple months respite before Sundance, so naturally thoughts turn to the Oscar race. While I'm as curious as anyone else which films will end up garnering the big nod (and I will be really surprised if Juno doesn't get a few noms, especially for screenwriting), as an indie girl I'm most interested in the docs and foreigns. I'm a documentary dork, and one of the things I most look forward to covering at any given film fest is the doc slate -- which, as both David Poland and Anne Thompson have noted in post-Toronto columns, have been weak this year relative to the past couple years. No one really seems to be sure why this is, exactly, although the surprising success of March of the Penguins in 2005 fueled an interest in documentaries that led, perhaps, to a bit of a glut.

The trouble with documentaries is that, penguin love aside, docs are not something your average person is going to go out of their way to shell out ten bucks to see at a theater. Rent from the video store or add to your Netflix queue, perhaps, but when you're looking for a film to see on date night, the depressing topics that tend to make up much of the available documentary fare are not really the first thing that comes to mind. When's the last time you said, "Hey, honey, I know what to do tonight -- let's get dinner at that place over in Little Italy we like, and then let's go see that new Iraq war doc!" Given a choice between a bummer doc and, say, Superbad, most folks are going to opt for the laughs over the conscience-pricking dose of reality.

One of my fave films at Sundance this year was For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary exploring the disconnect between what most Christians believe about homosexuality versus what the Bible actually has to say on the subject and,in particular, the way the Christian right has used misinterpretation of the Biblical take on the issue to shut homosexuals out of their faiths.

Director Daniel Karslake scored some amazing interviews to flesh out the film, including Bishop Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Zachary Mayer, and, at the center of the film, Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man to be elected Bishop of that denomination. Robinson's election was controversial and divisive, and he and his partner received so many death threats that he had to wear a bullet-proof vest under his robes at his consecration (because Jesus was all about the death threats, right?)