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Journal of Religion & Film

Articles 91 - 120 of 137

Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Ask The Beasts Of The Southern Wild: Exploring Human Identity As Beast, Being And Beholder In Ask The Beasts: Darwin And The God Of Love And Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Stephanie Cherpak Clary Dec 2018

Ask The Beasts Of The Southern Wild: Exploring Human Identity As Beast, Being And Beholder In Ask The Beasts: Darwin And The God Of Love And Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Stephanie Cherpak Clary

Journal of Religion & Film

Anthropocentrism and hierarchical dualism together encourage a dangerous anthropology where human primacy among creation and the prioritization of certain humans leads to destruction for all. During a time when suffering caused by climate change continues to intensify, it is increasingly important to find compelling ways to share the stories of those who suffer most. I will explore how Beasts of the Southern Wild (Zeitlin, 2012) contextualizes the ecofeminist theology found in Johnson’s Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (2014), specifically the idea of humans identifying as beasts, beings and beholders. Furthermore, I will discuss how the representation …

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Novitiate, Joshua Canzona Apr 2018

Novitiate, Joshua Canzona

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Novitiate (2017) directed by Maggie Betts.

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Thelma, Kevin V. Dodd Apr 2018

Thelma, Kevin V. Dodd

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Thelma (2017) directed by Joachim Trier.

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Beast, Rubina Ramji Feb 2018

Beast, Rubina Ramji

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Beast (2018), directed by Michael Pearce.

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Women Are Speaking Up At Sundance, Rubina Ramji Feb 2018

Women Are Speaking Up At Sundance, Rubina Ramji

Journal of Religion & Film

Women speak up at Sundance 2018.

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Quiet Heroes, William L. Blizek Jan 2018

Quiet Heroes, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Quiet Heroes (2018), directed by Jenny Mackenzie, Jared Ruga, and Amanda Stoddard.

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Puzzle, John C. Lyden Jan 2018

Puzzle, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Puzzle (2018), directed by Marc Turtletaub.

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The Miseducation Of Cameron Post, John C. Lyden Jan 2018

The Miseducation Of Cameron Post, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018), directed by Desiree Akhavan.

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Half The Picture, John C. Lyden Jan 2018

Half The Picture, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Half the Picture (2018), directed by Amy Adrion.

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Believer, John C. Lyden Jan 2018

Believer, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Believer (2018), directed by Don Argott.

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The Shape Of Water, Ken Derry Dec 2017

The Shape Of Water, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Shape of Water (2017), directed by Guillermo del Toro.

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Revenge, Tony Michael Oct 2017

Revenge, Tony Michael

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Revenge (2017), directed by Coralie Fargeat.

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Two-Spirit Mexica Youth And Transgender Mixtec/Muxe Media: La Mission (2009), Two Spirit: Injunuity (2013), And Libertad (2015), Gabriel S. Estrada Apr 2017

Two-Spirit Mexica Youth And Transgender Mixtec/Muxe Media: La Mission (2009), Two Spirit: Injunuity (2013), And Libertad (2015), Gabriel S. Estrada

Journal of Religion & Film

Independent directors Peter Bratt, Adrian Baker, and Avila-Hanna create differing trans-border queer Indigenous media that resist Eurocentric cic-heteropatriarchy. While Bratt’s feature-length narrative film La Mission (2009) features a masculine Mexica gay teenager who survives fused homophobic and trans*-phobic violence, Baker’s short animation Two Spirit: Injunuity (2013) makes stronger trans* and two-spirit Mexica youth identity affirmations. Avila-Hanna’s short documentary Libertad (2015) offers the clearest transgender narrative of the three films as it focuses on a California transgender Mixtec immigrant activist who is coming of age as a woman with the aid of hormones and gender affirming surgery. This article’s trans*- and …

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Hidden Figures, Carol Miles Apr 2017

Hidden Figures, Carol Miles

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Hidden Figures (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi.

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I Love Dick, William L. Blizek Feb 2017

I Love Dick, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of I Love Dick (2017), directed by Jill Soloway.

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Interview With Jessie Auritt, Director Of Supergirl, William L. Blizek Jan 2017

Interview With Jessie Auritt, Director Of Supergirl, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is an interview with Jessie Auritt, the director of Supergirl (2017), conducted by Bill Blizek.

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I Dream In Another Language, John C. Lyden Jan 2017

I Dream In Another Language, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of I Dream in Another Language (2017), directed by Ernesto Contreras.

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The Wound, John C. Lyden Jan 2017

The Wound, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Wound (2016), directed by John Trengove.

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Colossal, John C. Lyden Jan 2017

Colossal, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Colossal (2017) directed by Nacho Vigalondo.

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Before I Fall, John C. Lyden Jan 2017

Before I Fall, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Before I Fall (2017), directed by Ry Russo-Young.

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Bearing Witness: The Sight Of A Sacrifice In Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills, Megan Girdwood Oct 2016

Bearing Witness: The Sight Of A Sacrifice In Cristian Mungiu's Beyond The Hills, Megan Girdwood

Journal of Religion & Film

Drawing on the theories of sacrifice advanced by Sigmund Freud (1913) and René Girard (1972; 1982), this article interprets the exorcism depicted by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu in Beyond the Hills (2012) as a sacrifice. Explicating Girard’s defence of Freud, I use his framing of sacrifice as a function of religion to reassess scholarship addressing the parallels between liturgical and cinematic forms of representation. If, as some scholars propose, the practices of the cinema-goer and the worshipper mirror each other, then the sacrificial witness portrayed by Mungiu constitutes a third pillar in this discourse. I argue that Mungiu dramatizes the …

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“He Who Kills The Body, Kills The Soul That Inhabits It”: Feminist Filmmaking, Religion, And Spiritual Identification In Vision, Carl Laamanen Apr 2016

“He Who Kills The Body, Kills The Soul That Inhabits It”: Feminist Filmmaking, Religion, And Spiritual Identification In Vision, Carl Laamanen

Journal of Religion & Film

In this article, I argue that the 2009 film, Vision: From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen, presents an example of feminist filmmaking that seeks to draw viewers into spiritual identification with the protagonist, 12th-century mystic Hildegard, through its narrative and formal techniques, encouraging the audience to share in Hildegard’s visionary experiences. The film does so in an explicitly feminist way, drawing upon unconventional visual and sonic aesthetics to highlight the power and authority of Hildegard’s spiritual experiences. In particular, Vision’s use of music and sound points toward a conception of feminine spirituality that values the …

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Seeing The Light, Hearing The Call: Women Religious As Spectators And Subjects Of Popular Nun Films, Maureen A. Sabine Professor Apr 2016

Seeing The Light, Hearing The Call: Women Religious As Spectators And Subjects Of Popular Nun Films, Maureen A. Sabine Professor

Journal of Religion & Film

Though popular films like The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Nun’s Story (1959), and The Sound of Music (1965) have routinely been criticized for circulating polarized stereotypes about nuns, convent memoirs indicate that some women felt the stirrings of a religious vocation from watching these movies. This article arose out of interest in whether other women heard God’s call through nun films, and is based on a survey of 86 sisters from 28 different communities who had entered the convent between 1947 and 2007, and were prepared to discuss what they saw in these …

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Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle And Queer Style From The Silent Era To The Modern Day, Kent L. Brintnall Apr 2016

Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle And Queer Style From The Silent Era To The Modern Day, Kent L. Brintnall

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Richard Lindsay, Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day (Denver, CO: Praeger, 2015).

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Silver Screen Buddha: Buddhism In Asian And Western Film, Ronald S. Green Oct 2015

Silver Screen Buddha: Buddhism In Asian And Western Film, Ronald S. Green

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Silver Screen Buddha, Buddhism in Asian and Western Film by Sharon A. Suh.

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An Evil Threat To Marriage, Children And The Future: Queer Theory, "The Passion Of The Christ," And Evangelical Political Rhetoric, Richard Wolff Apr 2015

An Evil Threat To Marriage, Children And The Future: Queer Theory, "The Passion Of The Christ," And Evangelical Political Rhetoric, Richard Wolff

Journal of Religion & Film

This article employs queer theory to analyze Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ (2004) for its portrayal of queer characters (Satan and Herod) in contrast with non-queer (Pilate and Claudia, Seraphia, Simon the Cyrene, and Mary, Christ’s mother), and how it depicts the former as evil and the latter as good. In particular, these contrasts involve self-indulgent or predatory sexual expression versus a healthy marital relationship, and evil versus loving influences over children, who represent hope for the future. Finally, the article looks at the film’s heavy marketing to American evangelicals and how the symbolic representations in the …

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Undoing The Claim Of Objectivity: Contradictions At The Heart Of Bergtji Van Der Haak, Saudi Solutions (2005), Anisa Saeed Mohammed Nasser Apr 2015

Undoing The Claim Of Objectivity: Contradictions At The Heart Of Bergtji Van Der Haak, Saudi Solutions (2005), Anisa Saeed Mohammed Nasser

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper is a study of Bergtji van der Haak, Saudi Solutions (2005). It attempts to question Bergtji van der Haak’s claim of “objective” depiction of Saudi women’s “reality,” as well as the claim of portraying Saudi women through their perspectives as stated in the opening scene. The premise is that the editing strives to undercut the very views of the women that the film is claiming to present, and in the process it duplicates some of the very mechanisms of oppression that the film is denouncing. The documentary’s attempt at ‘subalternizing’ and diminishing Saudi women discloses the subjectivity of …

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Iranian Women, Iranian Cinema: Negotiating With Ideology And Tradition, Najmeh Moradiyan Rizi Apr 2015

Iranian Women, Iranian Cinema: Negotiating With Ideology And Tradition, Najmeh Moradiyan Rizi

Journal of Religion & Film

Throughout the ruptures of Iran’s history, Iranian women have been at the core of any social and political changes and challenges. In this historical context, Iranian women’s body, sexuality, and individuality have been confined within the constitution of religion and tradition. In recent years, however, the new generation of Iranian women is negotiating the notions of femininity, sexuality, and modernity in Iran’s society. Along with this negotiation, Iranian cinema, as the visual showcase of Iranian culture and society, has recently represented an unprecedented portrayal of Iranian women on the screen. This portrayal stems from the gender consciousness of Iranian women …

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Cloud Atlas’ Queer Tiki Kitsch: Polynesians, Settler Colonialism, And Sci-Fi Film, Gabriel S. Estrada Oct 2014

Cloud Atlas’ Queer Tiki Kitsch: Polynesians, Settler Colonialism, And Sci-Fi Film, Gabriel S. Estrada

Journal of Religion & Film

Polynesian theories of film reception, visual sovereignty, feminisms, and worldview offer critical insights into The Wachowskis' and Tykwer's 2012 film Cloud Atlas. From Indigenous and Native feminist film perspectives, Cloud Atlas offers a sci-fi future deeply entrenched in the queer tiki kitsch of settler colonialism as situated within a comparative context of other queer Indigenous film. As an example of heteropatriarchal settler colonialism, the Cloud Atlas plot supports the heterosexual triumphs of cross-racial couples and sublimates the possibilities of transgender reincarnation. Although Cloud Atlas attempts to critique Christian slavery and defend a secular abolitionist stance in the 1848 South Pacific, …

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The Virgin Mary On Screen: Mater Dei Or Just A Mother In Guido Chiesa’S Io Sono Con Te (I Am With You), Timothy J. Johnson, Barbara Ottaviani-Jones Mar 2014

The Virgin Mary On Screen: Mater Dei Or Just A Mother In Guido Chiesa’S Io Sono Con Te (I Am With You), Timothy J. Johnson, Barbara Ottaviani-Jones

Journal of Religion & Film

Guido Chiesa’s Io Sono con Te (I Am with You) offers a unique, albeit controversial take on Mary, the mother of Jesus. Filmed in Tunisia, and subject to criticism by Italian Catholic authorities and film critics alike, Io Sono con Te presents a rich anthropological-theological reflection on religion, culture, gender, and sacrifice. Not surprisingly, Chiesa draws on René Girard’s scapegoat theory throughout his film as he fashions Mary as the forceful protagonist in a familiar yet controversial story.


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