Spiritual Cinema

They’re called New Age movies, or spiritual cinema.

The mainstream media rarely write about them, the critics don’t much care for them and they’re never advertised on TV.

They appeal to the people “who shop at Whole Foods, go to wellness expos, do yoga and consider themselves religious liberals,” according to movie marketing consultant Bobbi Cowan.

But in the last couple of years movies like “What the Bleep Do We Know!?,” which attempts to link metaphysics and quantum mechanics; “Indigo,” about spiritually gifted children; and “The Celestine Prophecy,” recently opening in select theatres, have tapped an audience of spiritual seekers.

They’re not the religious traditionalists who flocked to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” But like that audience, they are hungry for cinematic experiences about spiritual awakening.

Usually the films are modestly budgeted and independently produced by individuals who believe in their message. Often, though, an established Hollywood distributor will snap up a finished film and sell it to theaters.

Lionsgate, for example, is distributing this year’s “Peaceful Warrior,” about a troubled college gymnast who becomes the disciple of a wisdom-dispensing late-night gas station attendant.

Next up will be “The Celestine Prophecy,” a “spiritual thriller” based on James Redfield’s best-selling novel about an ancient Peruvian parchment that holds the key to a worldwide spiritual awakening and the reactionary forces attempting to destroy it.

The movie is playing in select theaters across the country and will reach more in the weeks to come. But it already has a buzz, thanks to advance screenings.

“We sold out (an) advance ‘Celestine’ screening in two hours with just an e-mail list of 2,500 Kansas Citians who are interested in spiritual movies,” says Jamie Rich of Open Circle, which does event management and marketing for spiritually oriented organizations.

Working online is the best way to get the word out to the target audience, Rich says: “Lots of these people don’t watch TV or read the paper. They rely on information from sources they trust and people they know.”

Andrew Fogelson, who has been the marketing chief for three major studios and now operates his own Los Angeles-based movie consulting company, says he first noticed the phenomenon a couple of years ago when he helped promote “Indigo.”

He had no advertising budget for the film, directed by his friend Stephen Simon, so he had to find a cheap way to get the word out.

“We concentrated on reaching the people for whom the film was made,” Fogelson says. “We did that by exhibiting the movie for one showing on a Saturday morning in independent and AMC theaters all over the country. We rented the auditoriums. And we got the word out through the Internet, advertising on sites frequented by our target audience.”

The result: On that single day, 120,000 people across the U.S. saw “Indigo.”

“We realized then that a nontraditional movie could make money by reaching its audience in nontraditional ways,” says Fogelson, who now is working with the makers of “The Celestine Prophecy.”

This fall, “Conversations With God,” a film adaptation of the first book in Neale Donald Walsch’s best-selling trilogy, will make 18 stops on a national publicity tour.

In 1992, a depressed Walsch began writing questions to God – and, by his account, found his hand scribbling down answers dictated by the Almighty. The book appeared in 1995 and, according to Publishers Weekly, stayed on the best-seller list for more than 2 1/2 years.

Sneak previews of “Conversations” will be held all over the country the weekend of Oct. 22, but not in traditional movie theaters.

“We’re sending DVD versions of the film to churches, bookstores, nonprofit organizations,” says Marianne Wilson, a film distribution consultant working with the moviemakers. “We have an e-mail campaign, and people are signing up to host screenings.”

Word of the screenings is being disseminated on Web sites such as www.spiritualcinemacircle.com and www.spiritualcinemanetwork.com. Tickets cost $10, with half the money going to the film’s producers and half to the sponsoring organization.

“After that, the film will open in commercial theaters, and we think it will play to a much broader audience,” Wilson says. ” ‘Conversations With God’ is known globally. … Even people who haven’t read it have heard of it. And it’s a story that resonates with just about everyone.”

Open Circle’s Rich says that despite the potential in all this, he’s concerned about quality.

“What could kill this phenomenon is greed,” he says. “Some of these people may start trotting out inferior films trying to cash in on a trend. And that will turn off the audience.”

He pointed to the dismal performance earlier this year of “What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole,” a sequel to the wildly successful “What the Bleep Do We Know!?”

“It wasn’t so much a movie as a bunch of extras like you’d expect to find on a DVD,” Rich says. “It left a lot of people with a bad taste.”

Meanwhile, the marketing lessons being learned from films like “What the Bleep …” and “The Celestine Prophecy” have broader applications than just spiritual movies, according to Fogelson.

“This niche marketing technique can be applied to almost any movie,” he says. “It could be movies that appeal to followers of traditional religions, to ethnic minorities, to audiences at either the right or left end of the political spectrum.

“The key is the ability to reach the people whose intellectual and social views are consistent with those of your movie.”