“Secrets, Dreams, Faith and Wonder” is a multi-award-winning feature-length non-narrative “visual music” film; its five movements (the short-subject contains one section from each movement) use computer animation, painted film, and photographic sources (together with an original electronic-music soundtrack), and map loosely onto the sections of the Catholic mass (but with an epistle lesson from Martin Luther King and a credo by Mahatma Gandhi).
The five pieces of music incorporate voices in Latin, English, and Arabic (texts from the Bible, by M. L. King and M. K. Gandhi) as well as bird and whale songs. Each of the videos was made to fit the music of the respective movement.
The motivation for “Secrets, Dreams, Faith and Wonder,” for making a new mass for the new millennium, is summed up in the following paraphrased quote from the late Joseph Campbell, “Those who have heard the rhythms and hymns of the angels, who have understood any of the words of the angels, will try to recite those hymns in such a way that the angels will be attracted.”
Directed by Stephen Travis Pope (USA)