Slent Chalice is a self-teaching or assignable novella adaptation of The Passion, winner of Rome, Italy's 2023 8 and Halfilm Film Festival Best Short Award.
When Jean Smitty gets a job teaching at a mission in socialist China, it is while restrictions on religion and political education in China were especially severe. Nineteen-seventy to 1975 marked the height of the Cultural Revolution when religious expression and independent thought were aggressively suppressed. She has already read the book by a priest who was expelled for preaching Christianity there. Her role as the observer narrating the fictive story and flashbacks of her life illuminate the teaching of expository writing. Jean lectures and selects Zhi Chung to read his poignant essay describing the experience of losing his beloved Meilin to the Red Chinese Youth Party.
The characters, conflicts, and very pulse of the narrative become the classroom. The reader is both witness and participant, drawn into a space where imagination is not only instructed but ignited. Can this method become acceptable learning experience? Step inside and see.
