1 of 2
Dalton Thomas shooting in Northern Iraq in early 2015
2 of 2
It was in the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that Dalton Thomas knew he was being led to work among Islamic cultures. Here he was––a 21 year-old white kid who grew up on the beaches of Florida––in Indonesia, one of the countries that was hit hardest by an earthquake that claimed, depending on the source, between 234,000 and 275,000 lives. And, at this early stage in his Christian missionary work, he found himself in the country that houses the largest Islamic population in the world.
“[What] struck me was this was not the heart of the Arabian Peninsula––it was the other side of the planet, in many ways, from there––and yet the seeds of Islam went so deep,” Thomas recalls. “That was really impacting for me as a young, new believer; just seeing the fruit of Islamic missionary zeal and how deep the seeds went in a culture that is very, very profoundly different from the host culture in which the Qur'an and the caliphate really grew.”
In Indonesia, Thomas saw that there were ways to meet not only the urgent practical needs of a people whose lives had been shattered by the tsunami, but their spiritual needs as well. “The second thing that really impacted me [there] was the opportunity for pressing the issue of the good news of the Gospel in the most despairing circumstances,” he says, “which is very different than just carnal opportunity––it wasn't that. It wasn't, ‘oh, look, there's hurting people. We can really make a difference here.' It was: this is where the glory of the Gospel shines the brightest, is in the midst of this. How could we not prioritize places where human misery is at its peak to demonstrate and to declare the only way out of the misery? What struck me were the absolute limitations and bankruptcy of just meeting material needs without meeting the most ultimate need.”
Thomas says he's felt a strong connection to the Islamic world since he was saved when he was 18, and it's this connection that has shaped his work. He's a preacher, the founder and director of the missions organization Frontier Alliance International, and the regional director of the Antioch Center for Training and Sending for the Middle East and North Africa. He's authored two books: The Controversy of Zion and the Time of Jacob's Trouble: The Final Suffering and Salvation of the Jewish People; and Unto Death: Martyrdom, Missions, and the Maturity of the Church. And, since 2011, he's also a missionary filmmaker who largely works in the Middle East.
“I guess [where] my conviction level is at now in regards to film is that you can say certain things verbally, and then you can write certain things on a page, or you can combine all of that with writing and speaking and color and sound and sight and visuals and image and story and metaphor and symbolism,” Thomas says. “And that's film––it's combining all of these things together.” He explains he assesses the value of delving into a missionary film project by asking himself: why would we do this? “And it always boils down to: we're proclaiming something that needs to be proclaimed; or, advocating something that needs to be advocated to recruit for meaningful, intentional engagement over that issue, whatever it is.”
Better Friends Than Mountains is Thomas's second major film. Just shy of an hour long, it documents the plight of the Kurdish people in the Middle East, the circumstances surrounding their struggle for autonomy, and the missionaries that work with them. While it's a documentary, there are definitely cinematic elements to the film, which is rich in color and thoughtful in composition. “I don't watch documentaries to learn how to do documentaries, which I probably should do,” Thomas, who is self-taught, admits. “But I watch film. I like the composition and the lighting and the sound of film.” Stylistically, it's these filmic elements that he aims to bring to his documentaries.
For Better Friends Than Mountains, Thomas knew he wanted a low-profile camera with high dynamic range. Also, conscious that he would be filming in conflict zones, he didn't want to be burdened with a unit that was so expensive it would be financially devastating if it were to be damaged or stolen. Having worked with a Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K before, he selected Blackmagic Pocket Cameras for this project. (For a thorough rundown of his rig and workflow, visit: “Whatever we do, I want high dynamic range––I don’t really care about resolution or even frame rate. It would be nice to have high frame rate so that we could do night, slow-motion stuff, but at the same time, if I had to choose between high frame rates and high resolution over dynamic range, every day I’d go with dynamic range, and that’s why we use Blackmagic’s stuff,” he explains, adding that if he had a bigger budget he would still probably choose Blackmagic over other gear, just because of the dynamic range the manufacturer’s products offer.
The Pocket Camera's low profile is also necessary for several reasons: conflict zones are extremely dangerous, sometimes requiring the film crew to get out of hostile situations fast. And, even if there is no immediate danger, conditions aren't anywhere near as luxurious as they would be in a studio. But a low-profile camera profile also helps to keep the crew low-profile, something that is very important to Thomas. “You go into a refugee camp and you have three guys with three cameras, with sound gear and lenses––you're walking into a refugee camp with people who have absolutely nothing, and you're walking around with $10,000 to $20,000 worth of gear,” he illustrates. “If something's not happening in your soul about that, you're not … you have no empathy.” He says that as a production company, the missionaries at Frontier Alliance run their shoots with a spirit of honoring the tragic situations they're documenting. “You feel it when you walk into a refugee camp or you walk into a situation where there's just unimaginable suffering … and if you're thinking in terms of photo opportunities, or, ‘this will make our thing look really good,' or, ‘this will make me look good,' it defiles and debases the whole thing.”
Covenant and Controversy, another major project of Thomas's, is a five-part series on the continuing controversy over Israel, Jerusalem, and the Jews. This documentary, which he has been working on since 2011––it's actually the project that got him into film––will be released online in installments over the next five years. He explains that there is an initial, 90-minute version of this film already, but that he and his colleagues are re-filming and re-editing it into installments because he believes it's a more responsible way to treat the subject. “The issue of Israel is just so explosive on all sides. It's not like the issue of the Kurds. You tell a story about the Kurds and most people are like, ‘I had no idea. I didn't even know they existed. I didn't know their story, I didn't know who they were, I didn't know where they're from.' The issue of Israel is completely the opposite––everyone thinks they know everything,” he says. “And so you're coming into a situation that's emotionally charged, politically charged, theologically charged, geopolitically, socially, ethnically, religiously––it's charged on all sides.” Producing just one stand-alone film, he feels, in this case, would have been irresponsible.
For Thomas, filmmaking remains one of the strongest mediums––if not the strongest medium––through which missions organizations can communicate in this day and age. “There are big questions that we need to be asking, and it's not: how can we grow our ministries and be successful? It's: how do we rightly articulate and elevate and exalt the most important truths in the most powerful, profound ways? As [a leader of] a missions organization, to me that's not a secondary question. That's a primary question … that's our end game,” he says. “And [for] our generation, film may very well be the most powerful medium to do that.”
Carolyn Heinze is a freelance writer/editor.
Better Friends Than Mountains
Covenant and Controversy
Dalton Thomas
Frontier Alliance International
