It was with great pleasure that I was finally able to catch up with Paul Devlin’s BLAST! at Sheffield. Paul brought the project to IFP as a work-in-progress in 2006 and being a bit of a science geek myself, I was looking forward to seeing the finished work. I enjoyed the film, which follows his brother, an astrophysicist, as he and a team put together a telescope that will be launched by a balloon into the Earth’s upper atmosphere where it will record data about galaxy formation. Cool stuff, especially if the filmmaker can make it entertaining. And it is. It’s a movie about a scientific project but it is also about learning through trail and error, about what we know and don’t know about the universe, and also a smattering of faith in science. It is on this point that I feel compelled to write about the movie.

Paul told me that he has been having a tough time finding a US broadcaster, and one of the reasons seems to be that for science-based outlets, they don’t want any discussion of religion. For non-science outlets, there is too much science. Ugh. We’re back to the lowest-common-denominator programming. Programs that challenge our intellect and/or our beliefs can’t be included among the format programming? Aren’t Religulous and Expelled the top grossing docs of this year? People want to discuss faith but only if it is within groups that believe the same thing.

The really sad part for the BLAST! folks is that there isn’t really even that much discussion of faith. It pops up a couple of times with one of the team leaders who happens to also be a Christian. He, like most of us, doesn’t take the Bible as literal. He allows his scientific exploration to live alongside his faith. You don’t have to believe that the Earth is 2000 years old to feel the presence of God in your life. Most of us understand that that religious texts were written by men. Some of the most learned and interesting teachers I have had are scientists who approach their discipline with an understanding that it is but one among arts and humanities. Each discipline contributes to our whole knowledge.

I don’t think BLAST! attempts to answer any questions in the realm of faith, only to mention them within the portrait of a project and the people who contribute to it. It is an unusual film and I’m rooting for an outlet to step up and take a chance that there is an audience for this kind of story.