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Journal of Religion & Film

Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in Near Eastern Languages and Societies

Coexistence, My Ass!, John C. Lyden Jan 2025

Coexistence, My Ass!, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Coexistence, My Ass! (2025), directed by Amber Fares.

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Tantura, Sheila J. Nayar Apr 2022

Tantura, Sheila J. Nayar

Journal of Religion & Film

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

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Gender And Patriarchy In The Films Of Muslim Nations: A Filmographic Study Of 21st Century Features From Eight Countries, Candace Mixon Oct 2020

Gender And Patriarchy In The Films Of Muslim Nations: A Filmographic Study Of 21st Century Features From Eight Countries, Candace Mixon

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Patricia R. Owen, Gender and Patriarchy in the Films of Muslim Nations: A Filmographic Study of 21st Century Features from Eight Countries.

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The Gaze And A Sufi Ethics Of Vision In Majidi’S The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, And The Real, Cyrus A. Zargar Mar 2020

The Gaze And A Sufi Ethics Of Vision In Majidi’S The Willow Tree: Form, Meaning, And The Real, Cyrus A. Zargar

Journal of Religion & Film

In his 2005 film The Willow Tree (Bīd-i Majnūn), Majid Majidi offers a complex moral commentary on the faculty of sight. To do so, the filmmaker draws from Sufi theories of gazing, in which desire must be for ultimate meaning (maʿnā), as conveyed through the vehicle of perceivable form (ṣūra), a distinction with both metaphysical and ethical implications. Majidi presents sight, when devoid of contemplation, as a sort of voyeurism, especially in contrast to the privacy and immediacy of speech and especially within the context of the modern city. Moreover, his use of a …

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The Muslim World In Post-9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001-2011, Ali A. Olomi Mar 2020

The Muslim World In Post-9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001-2011, Ali A. Olomi

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Kerem Bayraktaroglu's The Muslim World In Post-9/11 American Cinema: A Critical Study, 2001-2011 (North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2018).

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Finding Fīlmfārsī: Reevaluations Of Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema, William E. B. Sherman Oct 2019

Finding Fīlmfārsī: Reevaluations Of Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema, William E. B. Sherman

Journal of Religion & Film

This article reviews two books: Pedram Partovi's Popular Iranian Cinema before the Revolution: Family and Nation in Filmfārsī, and Golbar Rekabtalaei, Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A Cinematic History.

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Temporal And Topological: Two Ways Of Living Israel/Palestine, Rocco Giansante Oct 2019

Temporal And Topological: Two Ways Of Living Israel/Palestine, Rocco Giansante

Journal of Religion & Film

Elia Suleiman and Amos Gitai are two Israeli filmmakers, Palestinian and Jewish respectively. Gitai’s first film, House (1980), was censored by Israeli Television—the producers of the film—due to its sympathetic portrayal of Palestinians. Elia Suleiman’s debut film, Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), was criticized at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia for a sequence showing an Israeli flag and Suleiman himself was accused of being a Zionist collaborator. By comparing the ways in which these two films deal with the political and social implications of the Israel-Palestine conflict, this article highlights two distinct methods of relating to facts on the …

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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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This Is Home, John C. Lyden Jan 2018

This Is Home, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of This is Home (2018), directed by Alexandra Shiva.

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Cries From Syria, John C. Lyden Jan 2017

Cries From Syria, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Cries from Syria (2017), directed by Evgeny Afineevsky.

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From Marseille To Mecca: Reconciling The Secular And The Religious In Le Grand Voyage (The Big Trip) (2004), Yahya Laayouni Apr 2016

From Marseille To Mecca: Reconciling The Secular And The Religious In Le Grand Voyage (The Big Trip) (2004), Yahya Laayouni

Journal of Religion & Film

By the early 1980’s, a generation of children of Maghrebi (North African) parents born and/or raised in France started to become more visible, particularly after they organized a march in 1983 from Marseille to Paris under the slogan “For Equality and against Racism.” This generation was introduced to the public as the “Beur generation.” The word ‘Beur,’ coined by this generation, is the result of a Parisian back slang and means ‘Arab.’ It quickly gained popularity and has been used to refer to children of Maghrebi origins living in France. As much as it has been hard for the Beurs …

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The Movie Mogul, Moses And Muslims: Islamic Elements In Cecil B. Demille’S The Ten Commandments (1956), Michael D. Calabria Ofm Apr 2015

The Movie Mogul, Moses And Muslims: Islamic Elements In Cecil B. Demille’S The Ten Commandments (1956), Michael D. Calabria Ofm

Journal of Religion & Film

Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film, The Ten Commandments, has come to define the genre of the biblical epic. It has earned a permanent place in American culture due to its annual airing on television during the Easter and Passover holidays. Most viewers are unaware, however, that DeMille had sought to make a film that would appeal to Jews, Christians and Muslims at a time when their common Abrahamic ancestry had yet to be articulated, and interreligious dialogue was all but unheard of. To this end, Henry Noerdlinger, DeMille’s researcher for the film, consulted the Qur’an, and screenwriters incorporated Islamic …

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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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Inception And Ibn 'Arabi, Oludamini Ogunnaike Oct 2013

Inception And Ibn 'Arabi, Oludamini Ogunnaike

Journal of Religion & Film

Many philosophers, playwrights, artists, sages, and scholars throughout the ages have entertained and developed the concept of life being a "but a dream." Few works, however, have explored this topic with as much depth and subtlety as the 13thC Andalusian Muslim mystic, Ibn 'Arabi. Similarly, few works of art explore this theme as thoroughly and engagingly as Chistopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception. This paper presents the writings of Ibn 'Arabi and Nolan's film as a pair of mirrors, in which one can contemplate the other. As such, the present work is equally a commentary on the film based on …

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Love That Tames: Anti-Heroes, Power And Islamic Reform Reflected In Two Iranian Films, David Sander Oct 2013

Love That Tames: Anti-Heroes, Power And Islamic Reform Reflected In Two Iranian Films, David Sander

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper is an exploration of two Iranian films that draw upon spiritual, artistic and literary roots in Islamic history, while at the same time engaging in critiques of knowledge and power in contemporary Muslim societies. These films offer a chance to explore ways in which culture (as distinct from theological discourse) deals with problems of reform in Muslim societies. This article juxtaposes the films with the trickster archetype in folklore, Sufi thought about leadership, and beliefs about the figure of the Mahdi (“the guided one” mentioned in Prophetic hadith as preceding the second coming of Jesus).

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The Gatekeepers, William L. Blizek Feb 2013

The Gatekeepers, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Gatekeepers (2013) directed by Dror Moreh.

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Fill The Void, John C. Lyden Jan 2013

Fill The Void, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Fill the Void (2012) directed by Rama Burshtein.

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