The Burning Times

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The Burning Times
Directed by	Donna Read
Produced by	Mary Armstrong Margaret Pettigrew Studio D, National Film Board of Canada
Written by	Erna Buffie
Starring	Starhawk Matthew Fox Margot Adler Professor Irving Smith Thea Jensen, Barbara Roberts, Hhstorians
Music by	Loreena McKennitt
Distributed by	National Film Board of Canada
Release date(s)	1990
Running time	56 min., 13 sec.
Country	Canada
Language	English
Preceded by	Goddess Remembered
Followed by	Full Circle
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The Burning Times is a 1990 Canadian documentary about the Early Modern European witchcraft trials.^[1]. It was directed by Donna Read and written by Erna Buffie, and features interviews with feminist and Neopagan notables, such as Starhawk, Margot Adler, and Matthew Fox. The Burning Times is the second film in the National Film Board of Canada's Women and Spirituality series, following 'Goddess Remembered.[1]

The film advances the theory that widespread violence against women and the neglect of our environment today can be traced back to those times.

The opening and closing theme music, composed by Loreena McKennitt, was released as the track titled "Tango to Evora" on her album "The Visit".

[edit] Criticism

In the film, Thea Jensen calls this period in history the "Women's Holocaust" and gives an estimate of a total of 9 million witches burned, admitting that this is a "high" estimate but quoting no alternative numbers.^[1] Scholarly "high" estimates range around 100,000, with estimates around 60,000 more common.^[2] Margot Adler, one of the featured historians in the film, recently stated: "We now know that most persecutions of witches occurred during a 100-year period, between 1550 and 1650, and the total number hanged or burned probably did not exceed 40,000." [2] Adler goes on to say, in the same article, that The Burning Times [film] "...heartrending and appalling descriptions of some of the trials, tortures, and deaths that did occur is not nullified by this new and more accurate research. But it serves no end to perpetuate the miscalculation; it's time to put away the exaggerated numbers forever." [3]

The movie is inaccurate in other respects, placing Trier in France instead of Germany, dating a stone cross there that is recorded to have been erected in 958 AD to 1132 AD without further explanation. The cross is shown as a "symbol of a new religious cult that was sweeping across Europe," despite Christian presence since 286.^[1] Robert Eady, a member of the Catholic Civil Rights League in Canada, has cited the film in a complaint to broadcast regulators, in particular mentioning offense at the movie's quote: "it took the Church two hundred years of terror and death to transform the image of paganism into devil worship, and folk culture into heresy." ^[1] Eady describes the documentary as propaganda intended to represent the Christian Church as "a wicked, patriarchal, misogynist institution" ^[1] Kapica adds "Women have genuine grievances with the Church. The Burning Times', however, is not going to help their cause."^[1]