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See a 10-minute preview of Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images below.

Order a DVD of Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images, an hour-long documentary about this amazing visionary artist.

Project: Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images

Format: Broadcast-quality digital video

Length: 57 minutes

Producers: Amy Kellum, Executive Producer in association with The Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, Jeanette Stokes, Executive Director, and Minnow Media, LLC, Donna Campbell and Georgann Eubanks, Producers

Release date: June 28, 2009

Budget: approximately $150,000 (details available upon request)

Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images, an hour-long documentary, offers an introduction to the lifelong pilgrimage of Meinrad Craighead and her mystical encounters with the Divine Feminine. As she explains the dreams and shamanic journeys that have often been the inspiration for her art, viewers are introduced to images of the Divine Mother that have appeared around the globe throughout human history. Craighead discusses the Black Madonna and her lifelong fascination with animals as the sacred emissaries of divine messages.

Audiences: The documentary is targeted to a general audience and is appropriate for public television, seminaries and religion departments, women’s studies programs, art historians, and Jungian scholars and their students.

Format: Meinrad Craighead is an inveterate storyteller whose tales refer to incidents in her childhood all the way up to her present experiences of daily prayer and reflection in the New Mexican desert. The program was developed using traditional documentary methods, meaning that the script was developed after following Meinrad Craighead around for several years. Additional footage of lectures, workshops, and visits to her studio are included. During the years of documentation, Craighead offered regular access to her studio for interviews in Albuquerque and joined the crew on a pilgrimage to Spain.

The documentary includes additional interviews with Rosemary Davies, a scholar of the history of western philosophy; Eugenia Parry, an art historian; Rachael Wooten, a Jungian analyst; and former students of Craighead’s. These voices place the work of Meinrad Craighead in a global, historical, religious, and artistic context and help to gauge the effect the artist’s work has on others. Original music, a significant representation of Craighead’s artwork, and samples of her extraordinary collection of historic images of the Divine Feminine complete this compelling biography of a national treasure who interprets for us the wellspring of her art and scholarship.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Amy Kellum first met Meinrad Craighead while involved with a group exploring Women's Spirituality through Duke University's Continuing Studies. She was so taken with Craighead's knowledge of ancient spirituality and the effect it has on our modern day ideas about God that she signed up for one of the artist’s workshops in New Mexico. She began videotaping Craighead's lectures in 2002 and has completed a Certificate in Documentary Studies at Duke University based on her work with the artist. 

SPONSORING ORGANIZATION The Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South (RCWMS) is a thirty-two-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to weaving feminism and spirituality into a vision of justice for the world. Over the years RCWMS has sponsored dozens of workshops, conferences, and retreats on women and religion, equal rights, economic justice, community economic development, health care, and violence against women and children. The organization has mentored and encouraged young women, professionals in religious institutions, writers, and activists. In recent years RCWMS has developed program areas about art, writing, creativity, and spirituality. RCWMS publications include a quarterly newsletter, pamphlets, and a book of essays by Executive Director Jeanette Stokes, entitled 25 Years in the Garden.

PRODUCERS Donna Campbell and Georgann Eubanks launched their full-service video production company, Minnow Media, in 2001 with the twin goals of 1) preserving the voices and stories of individuals, communities, sites, and events that are on the verge of dramatic change or silence; and 2) enriching public discussion around issues of individual growth and social transformation. Campbell’s work has won national awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Association of Women Broadcasters in Radio and TV, and the National Educational Television Association over the last decade. Before Minnow Media, Eubanks worked for over 25 years in the nonprofit sector as a writer, educator, and communications consultant for groups ranging from the Chautauqua Institution to Harvard Divinity School and is an Emmy winner in the category of original music and lyrics for a recent Minnow production.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact Amy Kellum, ak@meinradproject.org.