History Commons^™

Radically Feminist Or Monstrously Feminine?: Witches And Goddesses In Guadagnino's Suspiria (2018), Lindsay Macumber

Journal of Religion & Film

Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria explicitly and implicitly incorporates two connected myths, witchcraft and goddess centered matriarchal prehistory. The fact that each of these myths have been claimed by feminists in myriad ways may explain Guadagnino’s claim that Suspiria is a great feminist film that escapes the male gaze. In this article, I argue that Guadagnino’s representation of these myths lays bare their misogynistic origins and perpetuates, rather than subverts, patriarchal power structures.

In The Land Of Brothers, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of In the Land of Brothers (2024), directed by Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi.

Lee, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Lee (2023) directed by Ellen Kuras.

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, …

Bagdad On Fire, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Bagdad on Fire (2023), directed by Karrar Al-Azzawi.

Joonam, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Joonam (2023), directed by Sierra Urich.

Bombay Cinema’S Islamicate Histories, Amanda Lanzillo

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, eds., Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories (Intellect Ltd, 2022).

Biblical Boogeymen, Holy Ghosts, And The New Demonology: A Review Of Three Recent Books On Religion And Horror, Brian Collins

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review essay on three books: Brandon R. Grafius, Reading the Bible with Horror (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); Brandon R. Grafius and John Morehead, eds., Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination (Fortress Academic/Lexington, 2021); and Steve A. Wiggins, Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons (Fortress Academic/Lexington, 2020).

Life In The Multiverse: Bringing Chaos Out Of Order?, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper was given as the opening keynote address at the International Conference on Religion and Film at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on June 8, 2022, and is here presented in that form.

My thanks go to those who organized the conference for Vrije Universiteit, notably Professor Johan Roeland and Miranda van Holland.

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 …

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

Tantura, Sheila J. Nayar

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Tantura (2022), directed by Alon Schwarz.

Frederick Wiseman's Essene (1972): The Duality Of Mary And Martha, Nilita Vachani

Journal of Religion & Film

America’s legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman shot Essene 50 years ago at the height of the commune movement in the United States. Unlike his previous institutional films which showcase an insane asylum, a public high school, an inner city police force, a hospital, and a military training school, Essene's canvas is the far less turbulent terrain of a serene and austere Benedictine monastery devoted to the love and service of God and the divine spirit. This paper undertakes a close textual and hermeneutic analysis of Essene alongside an appraisal of Wiseman’s working methodology, his cinematic portrayals of character and dramaturgy, …

Where Is Anne Frank, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Where Is Anne Frank (2021) directed by Ari Folman.

The King With The Vīṇā Flag – Perspectives Of Rāvaṇa In Film, Achintya Prahlad

Journal of Religion & Film

Rāvaṇa, the ten-headed Rākṣasa (‘demon’) king of the epic the Rāmāyaṇa, is the most fascinating of all the antagonists in films based on Hindu mythology, so powerful that even the Sun cannot rise without his orders, and celebrated as an unparalleled musician-scholar and great devotee of the god Śiva. His passion for the vīṇā, a string instrument with divine associations, is so great that this instrument adorns his royal flag as its emblem. His consciousness of his supreme powers and great knowledge soon gives way to ahaṅkāra (hubris) and lust, which leads to his eventual downfall and death at the …

Reframing The Sacred: Valkyrie And The Basis Of Resistance, William S. Skiles

Journal of Religion & Film

The film Valkyrie (2008) is a thriller that explores the religious basis of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the last year of the Second World War. While the political motivations are clearly stated in exposition and dialogue, the religious motivations are shown through a series of images, symbols, and dramatic uses of the word “sacred” (heilig and its derivatives). The filmmakers focus on Colonel von Stauffenberg’s struggle against the Nazi conception of the sacred, revealing his Christian sense of the sacred as a basis for his resistance. The religious elements in the film provide …

Who We Are: A Chronicle Of Racism In America, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America (2021), directed by Emily Kunstler.

Izaokas (Isaac), William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Izaokas (Isaac), directed by Jurgis Matulevicius.

The Return: Life After Isis, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Return: Life After ISIS (2021), directed by Alba Sotorra Clua.

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. …

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 …

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.

Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Yalda, A Night for Forgiveness (2019) directed by Massoud Bakhshi.

A Hidden Life, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of A Hidden Life (2019), directed by Terrence Malick.

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 …

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, …

‘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.

Representations Of Nineteenth Century Mormonism In A Mormon Maid: A Cinematic Analysis, Elisabeth Weagel

Journal of Religion & Film

During the first quarter of the 20th century there was a trend in Hollywood to make films about Mormons. Practices such as polygamy created just the kind of sensationalism that attracted filmmakers (even Thomas Edison contributed with his 1902 film A Trip to Salt Lake). Many of these were B-pictures, but the 1917 film A Mormon Maid stands out because it was produced by a major production company (Paramount) and was backed by top director Cecil B. DeMille. It is often given passing reference, but very little genuine scholarship has been done on the film. A hundred years …

Reason (Vivek), J. Barton Scott

Journal of Religion & Film

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

Depictions Of Catholic And Protestant Bodies In Elizabeth (Dir. Kapur, 1998), Jennifer M. Desilva, Alison R. Orewiler

Journal of Religion & Film

This article uses the film Elizabeth (dir. Kapur, 1998) as a portal for understanding the interstices between modern and early modern conceptions of religion as it is read on the body. Elizabeth examines the period of religious and political unrest immediately before and after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), compressing the late 1550s through the early 1570s into a comprehensive statement on the relationship between the body, heresy, and corruption. This article investigates how lower body activities and functions, like dancing, sex, and defecation, were linked in both the film and early modern minds to immorality, corruption, …