Jeffrey Overstreet presents 'Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema: A Spiritual Journey'
Schedule
Thu, 28 May, 2026 at 07:00 pm
UTC-07:00Location
17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA, United States, Washington 98155 | Lake Forest Park, WA
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A film critic and professor explores how great films changed his relationship to faith.Third Place Books welcomes author, film critic, and Seattle U professor Jeffrey Overstreet for a conversation about his new book, Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema: A Spiritual Journey. Through incisive personal essays, Overstreet explores how falling in love with movies helped him escape from fear-based religion into richer experiences of imagination, beauty, community, and faith.
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
About Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema. . .
What if watching movies could be a spiritual discipline? For one film critic, great films became guiding lights -- an escape from fear-based religion into richer experiences of imagination, beauty, community, and faith.
Growing up in a bubble of churches and Christian schools, Jeffrey Overstreet was taught by example to condemn "worldly" art and culture as predatory and poisonous. Yet, the flicker of light from cinema screens proved a temptation too powerful to resist. And what he found there was quite the opposite of what he'd been told: He found God at play in ten thousand theaters. Now, through deeply personal and eye-opening stories, Overstreet invites you to retrace a revelatory journey: from Pinocchio to My Neighbor Totoro, from Disney's Hundred-Acre Wood to The Tree of Life, from The Black Stallion to Blade Runner, from Dead Poets Society and Do the Right Thing to Moonrise Kingdom and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.
Spoiler: Movies do not burn down Overstreet's faith. Rather, they free him to answer the Scriptures' instruction -- not only to love the world, but to learn from it. Great cinema invites us to hear a holy voice in the beauty of the natural world, and to break away from destructive distortions of Jesus's teaching. Guided by the lights of screens and Scripture, the author of Through a Screen Darkly and the fantasy novel Auralia's Colors testifies of a God who moves in mysterious ways, calling us into a life of courageous creativity.
Praise for Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema. . .
"Overstreet’s graceful prose amplifies his resonant defense of art as a vehicle through which believers can construct a more flexible, complex, and rewarding relationship with God. Readers will be left with a richer understanding of both film and faith."
—Publishers Weekly
"There are writers who astound me with the depth of their love and knowledge of cinema. And there are writers who pursue the truth and beauty of the divine, and reject the ignorance of the doctrinaire, with a rigor that inspires me beyond words. Jeffrey Overstreet is the very rare writer who does both. The gorgeous, jewel-like essays in Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema add up to a singular confession of faith, a revelatory memoir of artistic discovery, and a much-needed reminder of God’s presence in all spaces where light and darkness converge, movie theatres very much included."
—Justin Chang, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, The New Yorker
Jeffrey Overstreet is the author of the film-focused memoir Through a Screen Darkly and the four-volume fantasy series The Auralia Thread, which begins with Auralia's Colors. He is an associate professor at Seattle Pacific University, teaching creative writing, academic writing, and film studies. (Students there voted him Undergraduate Professor of the Year in 2024.) His award-winning essays and reviews have appeared in Image, Paste, Bright Wall Dark Room, and Christianity Today, where he served as Senior Film Critic. You can explore more than 25 years of his writing on the arts at JeffreyOverstreet.com. Jeffrey and his wife Anne, who is working on a follow-up to her poetry collection Delicate Machinery Suspended, live in Shoreline, Washington, where they are closely monitored by their cat FBI Special Agent Alonzo Mosely. (Photo Credit: Matthew Kennelly)
Want a signed edition of the featured book, but can't make it to the event? Order through our website or over the phone, and write your request for a signature or personalization in the comments field at checkout. Please call the hosting store if you're placing your order within 24 hours of the event.
For media or accessibility inquiries, please email [email protected] or call our Lake Forest Park store at (206) 366-3311.
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Where is it happening?
17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA, United States, Washington 98155Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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