The Faith Project - Breaking Bread
2015 · 5m · Canada
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Anglican priest and University of Manitoba chaplain Allison Chubb counsels students of all backgrounds on campus. She describes loitering with intent and finding a physical connection to God through the Eucharist.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A five-minute essay on Anglican chaplaincy and the Eucharist should be a sermon, not cinema—but Chubb's notion of 'loitering with intent' as spiritual practice actually ruptures the expected piety; it's almost subversive in its refusal to perform certainty.
This sits precisely in the lineage of the essay film as spiritual inquiry—formal restraint and voiceover tradition in service of theological argument—and the decision to anchor faith in physical, embodied practice over doctrine shows sophisticated curatorial thinking about what cinema can do that preaching cannot.
The singular move here is treating a chaplain's voice not as authority but as witness, letting her describe the body's role in belief without ever cutting away to prove it; that restraint—refusing the visual confirmation we expect—is what makes the intimacy real.