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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
No Riddle But Time: Historical Consciousness In Two Islamicate Films, David Sander
No Riddle But Time: Historical Consciousness In Two Islamicate Films, David Sander
Journal of Religion & Film
This article explores ways in which film expresses “internal history” in the context of Muslim cultures. As such, it enquires how film can work as both Islamic art and historical contemplation. The films discussed here, Nacer Khemir’s Wanderers in the Desert and Muhammad Rasoulof’s Iron Island, inhabit and explore the borderline between imagination and reality. The films in question offer an imaginal interspace between “modern” and “traditional” worlds. As such they open up critical perspectives on the meaning of history. What follows is a discussion of how each film offers a window onto differing perceptions of time, and what …
The Gaze And A Sufi Ethics Of Vision In Majidi’S The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, And The Real, Cyrus A. Zargar
The Gaze And A Sufi Ethics Of Vision In Majidi’S The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, And The Real, Cyrus A. Zargar
Journal of Religion & Film
In his 2005 film The Willow Tree (Bīd-i Majnūn), Majid Majidi offers a complex moral commentary on the faculty of sight. To do so, the filmmaker draws from Sufi theories of gazing, in which desire must be for ultimate meaning (maʿnā), as conveyed through the vehicle of perceivable form (ṣūra), a distinction with both metaphysical and ethical implications. Majidi presents sight, when devoid of contemplation, as a sort of voyeurism, especially in contrast to the privacy and immediacy of speech and especially within the context of the modern city. Moreover, his use of a …