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Articles 1 - 30 of 37
Full-Text Articles in Other Film and Media Studies
Pussy Protest! Protest Zines To Uplift Marginalized Voices, Alekz Nelson
Pussy Protest! Protest Zines To Uplift Marginalized Voices, Alekz Nelson
Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects
A publication of 4 separate zines made up of 12 pages each. The zines delve into the history of the Americans with Disabilities Act, trans women and their music artistry, lack of lesbian media, and inmate working conditions. These zines aim to not only raise awareness towards these issues, but spark action from readers by providing practical and doable options to pursue. With societal attitudes and political administrations becoming more conservative, spreading this information and awareness is vital to ensure that these alternatives ways of life are not forcibly erased.
Quasi-Feminism And Identity Exploration In The Film Laapata Ladies, Dr. Bharat Dhiman, Nausheen Khan
Quasi-Feminism And Identity Exploration In The Film Laapata Ladies, Dr. Bharat Dhiman, Nausheen Khan
Journal of Religion & Film
The film Laapata Ladies (2024), directed by Kiran Rao, is a social commentary revolving around misogyny and the socio-cultural barriers faced by women in rural India, serving as a brilliant ode to womanhood and conveying its message effectively without any melodrama, thereby reflecting social realities at a ground level. The film explores the protagonists’ inner dilemmas, constraints, struggles, and hardships, advocating the cause for inclusivity from a quasi-feminist perspective, poignantly urging us to re-examine our perspectives and stirring conversations around the need for women to establish their own identities, away from the standard kaleidoscope of the male gaze.
28 Years Later, Dennis Etzel Jr
28 Years Later, Dennis Etzel Jr
Journal of Religion & Film
In 28 Years Later, Alex Garland creates another screenplay of mythological elements based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and archetypal characters. The family unit of son, mother, and father are examined alongside the two Hero's Journeys the son Spike takes--a false one and a true one. Ultimately, the positive trickster of the scientist-priest sage represents the example using rituals of being human in a chaotic world.
Hermeneutical Priming And Linguistic Hijacking In The God’S Not Dead Series, Brant Entrekin
Hermeneutical Priming And Linguistic Hijacking In The God’S Not Dead Series, Brant Entrekin
Journal of Religion & Film
In this paper, I analyze the evangelical Christian film series God's Not Dead. I argue that the film series functions as Christian Nationalist propaganda through its rhetoric and aesthetic choices. I then develop two forms of epistemic manipulation that the film uses to fulfill its propagandistic function: hermeneutical priming and linguistic hijacking. I suggest that the film series' use of these rhetorical strategies highlights some of the ways that evangelical Christian cinema is engaging with rising right-wing political movements and developing unique evangelical imaginations.
100 Years Of Sergei Eisenstein: Iconographic Language And Revolution, Milja Radovic
100 Years Of Sergei Eisenstein: Iconographic Language And Revolution, Milja Radovic
Journal of Religion & Film
As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece Броненосец Потёмкин / Battleship Potemkin (1925), it is essential to re-examine the film that has had enduring influence on film theory, history, and scholarship. Voted one of the greatest films of all time, Eisenstein’s cinematic genius has been crucial to understanding the power of film language. This paper focuses on the underexplored relationship between Eisenstein’s film language and iconography, examining the ways in which Orthodox Christian iconography shaped the story of revolution. The paper delves into the ways in which Eisenstein conveyed complex ideas, demonstrating the technical developments of film …
Saintly Cinema: Modelling The Icon In The Flowers Of St. Francis And Andrei Rublev, Alexander Hart
Saintly Cinema: Modelling The Icon In The Flowers Of St. Francis And Andrei Rublev, Alexander Hart
Journal of Religion & Film
Throughout the history of the cinema, filmmakers have turned to the visual arts for inspiration in creating spiritual styles on film. In this essay, it is argued that Roberto Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) were influenced by Giotto di Bondone’s frescos and Andrei Rublev’s Eastern Orthodox icons, respectively. Committed to realism, Rossellini adopts Giotto’s proto-Renaissance, humanist art as a model for a spiritual style in which the Transcendent is manifested through the natural world. Subverting terrestrial reality, Tarkovsky adopts the aesthetic principles of the Eastern Orthodox icon, translating Pavel Florensky’s concepts of …
A Labor Of Love: Wall-E'S Redemption, Rosamund M. Gammie
A Labor Of Love: Wall-E'S Redemption, Rosamund M. Gammie
Journal of Religion & Film
Inaugurated into the Criterion Collection in 2022 this paper re-examines some of the initial responses to the 2008 Disney-Pixar animated film, WALL-E. The movie received a mixed reception, largely celebrated (but occasionally viewed as “too leftist” by others) for its environmental, anti-capitalist message by many public critics, yet disparaged or dismissed as being superficially empty, shallow, and hollow in academic circles. Labor has been the focus of some academic criticism of the film, particularly as it relates to commoditisation, but this paper recontextualises labor not with capitalism, but with love. By viewing the film through the dynamic of labor and …
Luz, Sheila Nayar
Luz, Sheila Nayar
Journal of Religion & Film
This is a film review of LUZ (2024), directed by Flora Lau.
Civil War, Dennis Etzel Jr
Civil War, Dennis Etzel Jr
Journal of Religion & Film
Alex Garland’s 2024 film Civil War exemplifies how film can be considered a modern mythology, using a war movie to tell the story of the hero’s journey with a mother archetype as the hero. Through an audience’s shared morals and values, an impartial point-of-view, symbolism, the Jungian mother archetype, transformational imagery, ethical dilemmas and collective fears, the film functions in the way mythology does while leaving viewers questions for their own lives.
That Way: An Examination Of Male Relationships In Film During The Hays Code, Jane Knudsen
That Way: An Examination Of Male Relationships In Film During The Hays Code, Jane Knudsen
Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects
The Hays Code (1934-1968) influenced the construct of United States masculinity and the discourse surrounding masculine presentation between the 1920s to the 1960s. The Hays Code and World War II affected the culture surrounding male/male relationships in the United States. Previous research done by David Lugowski (1999) and Jeffrey Suzik (1999) shows that both World Wars led to crises of masculinity in which the hegemonic ideal of masculinity was restructured to establish men as providers and warriors, and Code-era films reflected the discourse. To understand the gender roles in the 20th century, I analyzed the Hays code, male bonds, …
Mary Magdalene On Film In Twenty-First Century: A Feminist Theological Critique, Mary Ann Beavis
Mary Magdalene On Film In Twenty-First Century: A Feminist Theological Critique, Mary Ann Beavis
Journal of Religion & Film
Since the turn of the millennium, several films (and one popular TV series) featuring Mary Magdalene as a significant character, or even as the central character, have been produced. A few, specifically Son of God (2104), The Chosen (2017-), and Mary Magdalene (2019), gained a wide audience through some combination of theatrical release, television, and streaming services. Unlike earlier productions that unfailingly portrayed her conventionally as a penitent prostitute, these and other, less well-known films of recent decades have departed from this traditional Magdalene. This is no doubt due, among other things, to the influence of feminist theology and biblical …
From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr
From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr
Journal of Religion & Film
Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …
Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic
Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic
Journal of Religion & Film
This paper examines cinematic representations of religion and religious communities in the early cinema of the Yugoslav space. This paper introduces the readers to the rich heritage of the cinema of the Yugoslav space by providing 1) the first study of the representations of religion and the concepts of faith in the early film, and 2) novel approaches in reading religion and history through film. Film is used as a primary rather than supplementary source in historical research on diverse religious and ethnic communities in this part of the Balkan Peninsula. This is the first study that investigates the importance, …
Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff
Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff
Journal of Religion & Film
The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique …
Seeing And Interpreting Visions Of The Next Age In Interstellar, Nancy Wright
Seeing And Interpreting Visions Of The Next Age In Interstellar, Nancy Wright
Journal of Religion & Film
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) uses multiple styles of cinematography – documentary, painterly and expressionistic – to guide interpretation of its apocalyptic review of history. Within the prologue and epilogue of the science fiction film, clips from interviews originally filmed for Ken Burns’s The Dust Bowl (2012) invite questions about how to interpret documentary, revisionist and eschatological reviews of history. Cinematography functions as a self-reflexive cue to spectators within and outside the mise-en-scène to engage in eschatological interpretation. The representation of spectatorship and vision reveals the challenge of interpreting prophetic visions of the last things and the next age, which are …
Films For The Colonies: Cinema And The Preservation Of The British Empire, Thomas Barker
Films For The Colonies: Cinema And The Preservation Of The British Empire, Thomas Barker
Journal of Religion & Film
This is a book review of Tom Rice, Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (University of California Press, 2019).
Revising Mary Queen Of Scots: From Protestant Persecution To Patriarchal Struggle, Jennifer M. Desilva, Emily K. Mcguire
Revising Mary Queen Of Scots: From Protestant Persecution To Patriarchal Struggle, Jennifer M. Desilva, Emily K. Mcguire
Journal of Religion & Film
Since Mary Queen of Scots’ execution in 1587, she has become a symbol of Scottish identity, failed female leadership, and Catholic martyrdom. Throughout the twentieth century, Mary was regularly depicted on screen (Ford, 1936; Froelich, 1940; Jarrott, 1971) as a thrice-wed Catholic queen, unable to rule her country due to her feminine nature and Catholic roots. However, with the rise of third wave feminism and postfeminism in media, coupled with the increased influence of female directors and writers, Mary’s characterization has shifted from portraying female/emotional weakness and religious sacrifice to female/collaborative strength in hardship and a struggle against patriarchal prejudice. …
Corruption As Shared Culpability: Religion, Family, And Society In Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014), Maria Hristova
Corruption As Shared Culpability: Religion, Family, And Society In Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014), Maria Hristova
Journal of Religion & Film
This article engages in close analysis of how Andrey Zvyagintsev depicts corruption and its various manifestations: moral, familial, societal, and institutional, in Leviathan (Leviafan, 2014). While other post-Soviet films address the problem of prevalent corruption in Russia, Zvyagintsev’s work is the first to provoke strong public reactions, not only from government and Russian Orthodox Church officials, but also from Orthodox and political activist groups. The film demonstrates that the instances of legal and moral failings in one aspect of existence are a sign of a much deeper and wider-ranging problem that affects all other spheres of human experience. …
Apocalypse And Eschatology In John Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath (1940), Nancy Wright
Apocalypse And Eschatology In John Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath (1940), Nancy Wright
Journal of Religion & Film
John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) visualizes conventions of the apocalypse genre to represent not simply a particular historical setting, the Great Depression, but also a vision of history to be interpreted in terms of eschatology. Expressionistic photography transforms the characters’ experiences into enigmatic visions that invite and guide interpretation. A comparison of montage sequences in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and Pare Lorentz’s The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936), a Farm Security Administration documentary, clarifies how Ford’s narrative film aligns spectators within and outside the mise-en-scène.
Between Idealization Of A Martyr And Critic Of A Society: Analysis Of Axel Corti’S "Der Fall Jägerstätter", Jakub Gortat
Between Idealization Of A Martyr And Critic Of A Society: Analysis Of Axel Corti’S "Der Fall Jägerstätter", Jakub Gortat
Journal of Religion & Film
The new film approach to the figure of Franz Jägerstätter by Terrence Mallick in 2019 is an occasion to take a critical look at the first movie about the Catholic martyr that was made by the Austrian director Axel Corti in 1971. Although the movie turned out be to a huge success and until now is viewed as one of the turning points in coming to terms with the Nazi past in the Austrian film history, it idealizes, against the director’s intentions, the protagonist and preserves some of the characteristic elements of the history discourse of the times it was …
Religion And Culture In Inherit The Wind, Zachary Sheldon
Religion And Culture In Inherit The Wind, Zachary Sheldon
Journal of Religion & Film
Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (1960) has long been considered a classic for its indictment of McCarthyism as allegorized in a dramatic treatment of the Scopes Monkey Trial. But for all its political messaging, the film is also patently up front in its treatment of religious perspectives on culture. The presence of such material may be read allegorically but may also be read in connection with the period of the film’s production, as a statement piece on religious perspectives of media such as film. This article examines the religious messaging in Inherit the Wind in conjunction with religious perspectives of …
Touched By Grace? A Look At Grace In Bergman's Winter Light And Martin Luther's Writings, Kjartan Leer-Salvesen
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.
Representations Of Immigration In Québécois Film, Roland R. Buchta
Representations Of Immigration In Québécois Film, Roland R. Buchta
UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair
Québec is a region where national identity plays a particularly important role, mainly due to its social context, and the historical influence of anglophones on the province’s affairs. This element is reflected in its cinematic productions, as Santoro, Bachand, Desroches and Loiselle stated, “Québec cinema is indeed but the most recent example of the Québécois’ ability to translate their cultural specificity into an enduring and increasingly appreciated source of cultural and economic vitality” (161). Santoro et al further claimed that “Québec cinema is indeed a rich and increasingly diversified art form and has taken its place on the world stage …
Neo-Gnosticism At The Movies, Michael Kaler
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 …
An Old Film In A New Light: Lighting As The Key To Johannine Identity In "Ordet", Richard V. Goodwin
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 …
The Problem With David: Masculinity And Morality In Biblical Cinema, Kevin M. Mcgeough
The Problem With David: Masculinity And Morality In Biblical Cinema, Kevin M. Mcgeough
Journal of Religion & Film
The King David of the Bible, and especially as portrayed in the books of Samuel, is one of the most complex characters in ancient literature. We are told his story from his youth as a shepherd until his death as king of Israel. He kills a mighty warrior with a slingshot, goes to war with his king and later his son, and has an affair that threatens to throw his kingdom into disarray. The stories surrounding David seem perfect for cinematic adaptation yet what makes this character so compelling has been problematic for filmmakers. Here, three types of Biblical filmmaking …
Sundance Film Festival 2018, John C. Lyden
Sundance Film Festival 2018, John C. Lyden
Journal of Religion & Film
Introduction to the Sundance Film Festival 2018.
Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper
Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper
Journal of Religion & Film
This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …
“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan
“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan
Journal of Religion & Film
This article analyzes the portrayal of death in Peter Masterson’s 1985 film The Trip to Bountiful. My claim is that the experience of death, in the film, functions as a tool both for the elderly main character’s increased self-understanding and for her conscious, ethical action. I enter this discussion through an examination of late deconstruction’s ethical turn and the argument that aporetic unknowing, if experienced and endured, leads to the chance for real, authentic action. I then demonstrate how the film depicts such an aporetic encounter with death, and do so, in large part, by focusing on the film’s final …
"I Do Feel The Fire!": The Transformations Of Prison-Based Black Male Converts To Islam In South Central, Malcolm X, And Oz, Kameron J. Copeland
"I Do Feel The Fire!": The Transformations Of Prison-Based Black Male Converts To Islam In South Central, Malcolm X, And Oz, Kameron J. Copeland
Journal of Religion & Film
Historically, imprisoned Black male converts to Islam have been known for their narratives of redemption and struggles for religious freedom behind bars. While Islam possesses a strong visible presence throughout predominately Black areas of inner cities, it has become a natural feature of Black popular culture in mediums such as hip-hop, film, and literature. By the 1990s, the portrayal of Islamic conversions yielding Malcolm X-style transformations among young Black men, who formerly embodied self-destructiveness, were visible in films featuring Black male protagonists. The prison-based transformations typically involved highly influential Black Muslim leaders improving the social conditions of the inmate, the …