Hoover Street Revival [2003] [DVD]

Without missing a beat Fiennes cuts to Bishop Noel Jones 'backstage'. Like a rockstar getting ready for a gig he is priming himself for the coming sermon. When Fiennes cuts again to the choir in full flow the richness of the sound and the powerful emotion of the soloist set the scene perfectly. It might look like the congregation are there for the music and the dancing, but when Bishop Jones speaks he is powerfully charismatic. His message on this occasion is uncompromising but humorous - and well tailored to his audience: 'You gotta die out to the parties when the babies are born.'

The director then picks up this theme as the camera cruises through everyday suburban life: past tiny houses with cages around the doors, bars on the windows and yards surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire. The movie plunges straight into the interior life of the suburb, accompanying an ice-cream vendor as he prepares for work, ironing his shirt on the bed and then moving through to the bathroom where his baby daughter is clumsily washing herself. Fiennes demonstrates a feel for the beauty and pathos of human existence as we watch the father patiently showing his daughter how to scrub herself clean and then helping her put on her clothes.

This is not a cosy anthropological study. South Central LA is essentially an enormous shanty town, built in the desert. More aerial footage reveals the gridlock streets that resolve themselves into major roads, then larger arteries, then the freeway, branching out into a vast spaghetti junction - all of it surrounded by miles of low-cost housing. Fiennes assembles a cast of locals who talk engagingly and wittily about their experience of faith and the effect it has on their lives: carwash guys, regulars at a fast food joint, former gang members and drug users, the ice-cream vendor and a formidable octogenarian. The talk is of kicking drugs and drink, gang membership or just simply getting by.

It's not all misty-eyed honest-to-god stuff. Noel Jones Ministries is a thriving cottage industry with an impressive array of audio-visual recording equipment plus a duplication and packing plant for churning out cassettes. They appear to be doing a cracking trade, with a Top 20 of the most popular sermons, including the memorable 'Cancel my appointment with the Antichrist'. The director isn't afraid to show some of the dingier side of the local community though, accompanying the cops as they are called out to a domestic incident. Later in the movie the crew happen upon a gang shooting in an apartment block. The cameraperson manages to blend into the crowd, registering the shock and anguish of the local people without descending too far into voyeurism.

This is skilled, intelligent and compassionate documentary-making. It would be too easy to display the church of Bishop Noel Jones as some kind of cult of personality - although Fiennes doesn't shy away from displaying his obvious impatience at times with his flock (when they seem more transported by the music than the words of God). What seems clear from this movie is that South Central LA is not some war zone of WASP nightmare fantasy but a true community with parties, dances, sporting events and parades. What is also clear is that the Greater Bethany Church stands at the centre of this - not as a psychic vampire preying on the weak and the helpless, but reaching out to the troubled and dispossessed. Solid, meaningful filmmaking.