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Journal of Religion & Film

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Groundhog Day At 25: Conflict And Inspiration At The Tipping Point Of Seasonal Genres, Wayne Glausser Apr 2019

Groundhog Day At 25: Conflict And Inspiration At The Tipping Point Of Seasonal Genres, Wayne Glausser

Journal of Religion & Film

Groundhog Day has been recognized by leaders of many religions as an inspirational film. It tracks all the responses a person might have to the suspicion that the world has no God, design, or inherent purpose: first, transgressive self-indulgence; next, acedic depression; and finally, redemptive benevolence. During the filming, however, a conflict in vision between Harold Ramis and Bill Murray tore apart their friendship. Ramis wanted a romantic comedy founded on evolution from arrogance to selfless benevolence; Murray preferred a darker satire. Although the finished film reflects Ramis's vision of comedy--the genre of spring--Murray's satirical gestures leave traces of winter …

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Touched By Grace? A Look At Grace In Bergman's Winter Light And Martin Luther's Writings, Kjartan Leer-Salvesen Apr 2019

Touched By Grace? A Look At Grace In Bergman's Winter Light And Martin Luther's Writings, Kjartan Leer-Salvesen

Journal of Religion & Film

Ingmar Bergman holds a prominent place in the lineup of directors who have used cinema to investigate the meaning of life in a godless world. The so-called “Trilogy of God’s Silence” is often identified as the place where Bergman struggled most profoundly with core themes from the Christian faith. In Winter Light, he explores the topic of doubt, devastatingly, through a minister’s religious and existential crisis. This article, however, proposes that Martin Luther’s theology may provide resources for reappraising Bergman’s canonical film.

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The Representation Of Turkish Women In James Bond Films, Kerem Bayraktaroglu Dr Apr 2019

The Representation Of Turkish Women In James Bond Films, Kerem Bayraktaroglu Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

While there is ample academic material exploring the cinematic role of James Bond and the “Bond Girl”, this paper chooses to focus on and examine the significance of Turkish female representations in three films set in Istanbul: From Russia with Love (Terence Young, 1963), The World Is Not Enough (Michael Apted, 1999) and Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012). The varying representations in these films are scrutinized to investigate how they distinguish Turkish female characters and the connotations of Istanbul over time and whether this depiction is connected with Turkey’s changing position vis-à-vis the Western world. These questions thus have historical implications …

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Gaza, William L. Blizek Feb 2019

Gaza, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Gaza (2019) directed by Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell.

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The Farewell, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

The Farewell, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Farewell (2019) directed by Lulu Wang.

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Dolce Fine Giornata, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

Dolce Fine Giornata, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Dolce Fine Giornata (2019) directed by Jacek Borcuch.

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Divine Love, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

Divine Love, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Divine Love (2019) directed by Gabriel Mascaro.

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Sister Aimee, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

Sister Aimee, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Sister Aimee (2019), directed by Samantha Buck and Marie Schlingmann.

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Hala, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

Hala, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Hala (2019), directed by Minhal Baig.

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Abe, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

Abe, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Abe (2019) directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade.

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Hail Satan?, John C. Lyden Jan 2019

Hail Satan?, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Hail Satan? (2019) directed by Penny Lane.

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Spiral Farm, William L. Blizek Jan 2019

Spiral Farm, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Spiral Farm (2019) directed by Alec Tibaldi.

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Boni Bonita, William L. Blizek Jan 2019

Boni Bonita, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Boni Bonita (2019) directed by Daniel Barosa.

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Report From The 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, William L. Blizek Jan 2019

Report From The 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is the Introduction to the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.

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Eternal Now: Recent Time Loop Movies And The Sanctity Of The Moment, John C. Lyden Dec 2018

Eternal Now: Recent Time Loop Movies And The Sanctity Of The Moment, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

I will examine three time-loop films—Source Code (2011), About Time (2013), and Before I Fall (2017)—to suggest that while they all look to this world as the place where meaning can be found, they do not entirely reject transcendence. The hero of Source Code actually transcends the cycle only when he accepts to exist in it fully, suggesting a view like Buddhism that one only finds transcendence when one stops looking for it. In About Time the hero learns that he must accept certain things that he cannot change, and that his ability to relive the past without changing …

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Neo-Gnosticism At The Movies, Michael Kaler Dec 2018

Neo-Gnosticism At The Movies, Michael Kaler

Journal of Religion & Film

A number of American films released in the mid/late 1990s drew on, or have been discussed in the context of, gnosticism—a loose, imprecise umbrella term usually applied to a number of heterodox early Christian literary traditions. The Matrix is the most famous of this group of films, which also includes such films as Pleasantville, Dark City, The Truman Show, and Thirteenth Floor. This curious trend would not have been possible had it not been for the emergence of gnosticism in mainstream culture generally; as well, gnosticism’s emphasis on the spectacular, constructed and ultimately illusory nature of apparent reality became especially …

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Screening Religiosity In Contemporary Polish Films. The Role Of Religious Motifs In Visual Communication., Mariola Marczak Dec 2018

Screening Religiosity In Contemporary Polish Films. The Role Of Religious Motifs In Visual Communication., Mariola Marczak

Journal of Religion & Film

In the paper the Polish contemporary cinema has been explored as a vehicle through which films can reflect and communicate social issues, such as religiosity of Polish society, the character of it, the ways of expression and values promoted by it. The main components of modern Polish religiosity are shown as they are exhibited in film works perceived as part of modern visual culture. The examination also comprises most frequently and typically tools used for communicating or revealing the transcendent sphere in the contemporary Polish films, such as Christ-figures - including apocryphal ones and parables. They are considered as a …

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Visual Grandeur, Imagined Glory: Identity Politics And Hindu Nationalism In Bajirao Mastani And Padmaavat, Baijayanti Roy Dec 2018

Visual Grandeur, Imagined Glory: Identity Politics And Hindu Nationalism In Bajirao Mastani And Padmaavat, Baijayanti Roy

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper examines the tropes through which the Hindi (Bollywood) historical films Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Padmaavat (2018) create idealised pasts on screen that speak to Hindu nationalist politics of present-day India. Bajirao Mastani is based on a popular tale of love, between Bajirao I (1700-1740), a powerful Brahmin general, and Mastani, daughter of a Hindu king and his Iranian mistress. The relationship was socially disapproved because of Mastani`s mixed parentage. The film distorts India`s pluralistic heritage by idealising Bajirao as an embodiment of Hindu nationalism and portraying Islam as inimical to Hinduism. Padmaavat is a film about a legendary …

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‘Love-Jihad’ And Bollywood: Constructing Muslims As ‘Other’, Nadira Khatun Dec 2018

‘Love-Jihad’ And Bollywood: Constructing Muslims As ‘Other’, Nadira Khatun

Journal of Religion & Film

In the postcolonial nation state that is India, cinema has become an important tool for propagating the idea of nationalism. In recent times, one of the most controversial components of Hindu nationalism has been the hate campaign against what is termed as ‘love-jihad’, which is deployed as a weapon to mobilize, polarize, and communalize citizens. The Indian Hindi-language film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, has also become a controversial site. In this paper, I argue that if ‘Indian nationalism’ is to be represented as ‘Hindu nationalism’ and ‘Indian culture’ as ‘Hindu culture,’ it logically follows that this majoritarian construction needs …

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Myth And Monstrosity: Teaching Indigenous Films, Ken Derry Dec 2018

Myth And Monstrosity: Teaching Indigenous Films, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

The past few times that I have taught my course on religion and film I have included a number of Indigenous movies. The response from students has been entirely positive, in part because most of them have rarely encountered Indigenous cultural products of any kind, especially contemporary ones. Students also respond well to the way in which many of these films use notions of the monstrous to explore, and explode, colonial myths. Goldstone, for example, by Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen, draws on noir tropes to peel back the smiling masks of the people responsible for the mining town’s success, …

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‘I Am That Very Witch’: On The Witch, Feminism, And Not Surviving Patriarchy, Laurel Zwissler Dec 2018

‘I Am That Very Witch’: On The Witch, Feminism, And Not Surviving Patriarchy, Laurel Zwissler

Journal of Religion & Film

While contemporary discussions about witchcraft include reinterpretations and feminist reclamations, early modern accusations contained no such complexity. It is this historical witch as misogynist nightmare that the film, The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015), expresses so effectively. Within the film, the very patriarchal structures that decry witchcraft – the Puritan church from which the family exiles itself, the male headship to which the parents so desperately cling, the insistence, in the face of repeated failure, on the viability of the isolated nuclear family unit – are the same structures that inevitably foreclose the options of the lead character, Thomasin.

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A Journey Into The Heart Of God: Darren Aronofsky’S Noah (2014) As A Subversive Kabbalistic Text, Lindsay Macumber, Magi Abdul-Masih Dec 2018

A Journey Into The Heart Of God: Darren Aronofsky’S Noah (2014) As A Subversive Kabbalistic Text, Lindsay Macumber, Magi Abdul-Masih

Journal of Religion & Film

The title of this paper reflects our interpretation of this film as a subversive mystical text, from within the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah. This interpretation is itself the product of a long journey of thinking about, and wrestling with this film in various ways. In this paper, we will outline this journey, concentrating on our first impressions of the film, some notable shifts in our thinking on this film that alerted us to the connection between the film and Jewish mysticism, and some concluding remarks about the implications of this reading.

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Solidarity Beyond Obligation: Three Billboards Outside Of Ebbing, Missouri, Grace Chiou Dec 2018

Solidarity Beyond Obligation: Three Billboards Outside Of Ebbing, Missouri, Grace Chiou

Journal of Religion & Film

In his film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, writer-director Martin McDonagh creates a compelling parable regarding suffering, justice and solidarity. This unfiltered and witty, dark comedy examines the interlaced connections between humans and non-human agents during periods of anguish. Frequently, the ensuing communication includes abusive or belittling language and violent physical attacks. These extraordinary assaults are then contrasted with small gestures of kindness. While the film has faced various critiques, this piece of cinema creates a dynamic narrative to consider the human experience of grief and experiencing grace from one’s enemies. In doing so, Three Billboards paints an inclusive …

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Blackkklansman, William L. Blizek Nov 2018

Blackkklansman, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of BlacKkKlansman (2018), directed by Spike Lee.

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Reason (Vivek), J. Barton Scott Oct 2018

Reason (Vivek), J. Barton Scott

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Reason (Vivek) (2018), directed by Anand Patwardhan.

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Ad Vitam, J. Barton Scott Oct 2018

Ad Vitam, J. Barton Scott

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Ad Vitam (2018), directed by Thomas Calley.

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A Star Is Born, Sherry Coman Oct 2018

A Star Is Born, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of A Star is Born (2018), directed by Bradley Cooper.

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Myth And Ritual In Moonrise Kingdom, Sarah F. Haynes Oct 2018

Myth And Ritual In Moonrise Kingdom, Sarah F. Haynes

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay examines religious themes in Wes Anderson's film Moonrise Kingdom. An analysis of the film reveals the characters utilize ritual and myth as a means of creating knowledge and as the catalyst for a transformation of self. This essay argues that Anderson’s characters construct and interpret their reality, of self and world, by engaging with ritual, myth, and community.

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Terrence Malick Beyond Nature And Grace: Song To Song And The Experience Of Forgiveness, Elisa Zocchi Oct 2018

Terrence Malick Beyond Nature And Grace: Song To Song And The Experience Of Forgiveness, Elisa Zocchi

Journal of Religion & Film

In The Tree of Life Terrence Malick poses the question of the relation between the order of grace and the order of nature in the cosmos and in human existence, a question presented through the relation of mother and father in the O'Brien family. The aim of this article is to analyze this issue and to present the role of glory in The Tree of Life as the transfiguration of nature operated by grace. Specifically, the example of forgiveness as one strand of this glory seems to be an helpful tool to understand the movie. Forgiveness, already present in The …

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An Old Film In A New Light: Lighting As The Key To Johannine Identity In "Ordet", Richard V. Goodwin Oct 2018

An Old Film In A New Light: Lighting As The Key To Johannine Identity In "Ordet", Richard V. Goodwin

Journal of Religion & Film

In his essay on Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet, P. Adams Sitney draws a parallel between the protagonist, Johannes, and John the Evangelist, author of the fourth gospel. He suggests that the delusional Johannes’s sanity returns upon the recovery of his own name, turning on the invocation of his biblical namesake, John the Evangelist. Compelling as Sitney’s is, however, I argue that we arrive at a more helpful interpretation by attending to an aspect that has been largely overlooked in critical discussion of the film: lighting. Careful analysis of the lighting yields a perspective in which Johannes is understood to …

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