For our video workshop in the Emmaus Road Rotation we used a portion of the "Road to Emmaus Movie" (Vision Video)
"ROAD TO EMMAUS" Video (2010)
They've posted the entire video in high resolution for free on Youtube. See my review and notes below.
If you don't have an internet connection in your classroom, you can download the video using the free service at http://www.clipconverter.cc/ and play it on your laptop connected to a projector. [You may wish to check out this post How to Download Videos from YouTube and view them offline created at a later date.]
Jesus is portrayed by Bruce Marciano -of the Visual Bible's "Matthew" video fame, but this is NEW content, not a rehash of the Matthew video. It is an extended new presentation about the Road to Emmaus. Jesus (Bruce) explains the variety of scriptures alluded to in the biblical story itself --so that's interesting.
Good "as is" for youth and adults. I'm a Bruce~Jesus fan, but this video's "Jesus explaining himself" content is too long for younger children, Use Rotation.org's outline of the movie to know what to skip.
The opening and closing are particularly good. The long middle section of Jesus "explaining the scriptures" needs to be condensed or summarized off screen. In the OUTLINE to the ROAD TO EMMAUS MOVIE, there is a 7 minute section suggested to be skipped if you are short on time or have younger students. Other things can be zipped through if you have less time.
Editorial Aside:
It's a bit unfortunate but a great teaching opportunity that the producers of the movie chose to depict both disciples as men --when the scripture pointedly does NOT identify who the second disciple was.In the early Church, tradition and various texts suggested that Cleopas was related to Jesus, perhaps his uncle --i.e. Mother Mary's brother. Tradition and texts also indicate that several of the disciples, like "James the Lesser," were Cleopas' sons or related in some fashion. This means some of the disciples were Jesus' cousins. We know that women traveled with Jesus and the disciples. so it is entirely possible that the unnamed disciples is Cleopas' wife (Jesus' aunt). Women often traveled with their husbands for holy days. We also know that Jesus spoke directly to women in his ministry (something radical in those days) and that the early church in Acts and surrounding Paul had many named female disciples. Why did the disciple go unnamed? Perhaps that detail was lost to Luke, or irrelevant, or a great way to imagine yourself in that disciples' sandals.
This suggestion was updated by a member of our community.
