“Watchmen of the Night” : A Documentary about Le Barroux

Here is a really wonderful documentary, narrated in French with English subtitles, about the abbey of Le Barroux, called “Watchmen of the Night” (“Veilleurs dans la nuit”; this was brought to my attention by our founding editor Shawn Tribe.) It contains several scenes of the community’s liturgical life, including both the Office and Mass, and a good deal of interesting stuff about monastic life in general. There are also some scenes in which monks are interviewed about their vocation, and talk about what they did before entering the monastery; one of them was a member of a biker-gang, another describes himself as a former “hippy”, which is apparently the French word for hippy.