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Full-Text Articles in History

Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic Oct 2023

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, …


11 Days In August And The “Ghosts In The Machine”, Mae U. Caralde Oct 2023

11 Days In August And The “Ghosts In The Machine”, Mae U. Caralde

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This essay will put forward a case of political mimesis in the film, 11 Days in August (1983), which contributed to the buildup of social movements in the Philippines that ended the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. By describing the processes ‘imaging back’ and ‘bodying back’ Gaines (1999), the documentary film experience is freed from the rigidity and confinement with the visible, opening it up to affective faculties to acquire meanings into our lived realities. Explored in these two aspects of the mimetic faculty is the notion of orchestrating the film’s body and that of the spectator into the filmmaker’s filmic …


Frederick Wiseman's Essene (1972): The Duality Of Mary And Martha, Nilita Vachani Oct 2021

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, …


Apocalypse And Eschatology In John Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath (1940), Nancy Wright Mar 2020

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.


Book Review: Death, Image, Memory: The Genocide In Rwanda And Its Aftermath In Photography And Documentary Film, Scott Ahearn Jun 2019

Book Review: Death, Image, Memory: The Genocide In Rwanda And Its Aftermath In Photography And Documentary Film, Scott Ahearn

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

As Rwanda marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the genocide this spring, Piotr Cieplak’s book, Death, Image, Memory: The Genocide in Rwanda and its Aftermath in Photography and Documentation, is timely as an exploration of the documentary imagery developed since 1994 and its “uncomfortable coexistence with the genocide and its aftermath.” His book looks at still and video images from Westerners and Rwandans alike, and examines the ways in which these images succeed or fall short in bringing identity and remembrance to the victims of the genocide.