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Journal of Religion and Film
Problem-Based Learning and Two Studies of the Journal of Religion and Film: Self-Sacrifice and Music2017 •
This article offers a case study for using problem-based learning (PBL) in a religion and film course. PBL is an open-ended, experiential approach to teaching, which requires students to engage with a real world problem in groups. While many university classes are based on a lecture format and variations of that format, PBL asks students to take greater ownership of their learning. The problem drives what students will learn, how they will learn it, and what they produce to assess that learning. Students in a fourth-year PBL class at the University of Toronto Mississauga were given the following problem: analyze developments in the field of religion and film over the past 20 years through the lens of the Journal of Religion and Film. All four groups of students in the course made significant discoveries in their response to this assignment, and two in particular stood out. These two groups examined patterns evident in how the topics of self-sacrifice and of music were (and were not)...
Cultural Geographies
Hearing Grass, Thinking Grass: Postcolonialism and Ecology in Aotearoa/New Zealand2002 •
Energy at the End of the World
Arrival2019 •
This is a film review of Arrival (2015), directed by Denis Villeneuve . Author Notes Ken Derry is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). Since 2011 he has been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Religion and Film, and since 2012 he has been the Co-chair of the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group for the American Academy of Religion. Aside from religion and film his teaching and research interests include considerations of religion in relation to literature, violence, popular culture, pedagogy, and Indigenous traditions. He is the recipient of the 2013 UTM Teaching Excellence Award. This toronto international film festival review is available in Journal of Religion & Film: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/ vol20/iss3/15
2018 •
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.
This article compares the role of ambiguous character types in the national narratives of biblical Israel and modern America, two nations that ground their identities in myths of conquest. The types embody the tensions and ambivalence conquest myths generate by combining the invader/indigenous binary in complementary ways. The Indigenous Helper assists the invaders and signifies the land’s acquiescence to conquest. The Renegade Invader identifies with the indigenous peoples and manifests anxiety about the threat of indigenous difference. A discussion of these types in the book of Joshua, through the stories of Rahab and Achan, establishes a point of reference by which to view the use of corresponding characters in three films that attempt to invert the American conquest narrative: Little Big Man, Dances with Wolves, and Avatar. The three films overturn the conquest plot but also evoke motifs that affirm national identity. This comparison of literary and cinematic narrations reveals the contested and fluid character of national narratives.
Whale Rider represents a particular type of mythic film that includes within it references to an ancient sacred story and is itself a contemporary recapitulation of it. The movie also belongs to a further subcategory of mythic cinema, using the double citation of the myth—in its original form and its re-enactment—to critique the subordinate position of women to men in the narrated world. To do this, the myth is extended beyond its traditional scope and context. After looking at how the movie embeds the story and recapitulates it, this paper examines the film’s reception. To consider the variety of positions taken by critics, it then analyses the traditional myth as well as how the book first worked with it. The conclusion is, in distinction to the book, that the film drives a wedge between the myth’s original sacred function to provide meaning in the world for the Maori people and its extended intention to empower women, favoring the latter at the former’s expense.
2016 •
The mediation of religious narratives through sacred texts is intimately bound to the power relations involved in their transmission and maintenance. Those who possess such mediated messages and control their access and interpretation have historically held privileged positions of authority, especially when those positions are not easily contested. The 2010 film The Book of Eli uniquely engages these elements by placing the alleged last copy of the King James Version of the Christian Bible at the forefront of a clash between different individuals in a post-nuclear wasteland. This paper, drawing on Max Weber’s notion of “charisma,” and scholars addressing religion, power, and violence, examines the role of authority and the shifting power relations revolving around the possession and use of this sacred text throughout the film. In doing so, it seeks to carry associated implications and critiques outside of the film and into the contemporary world.
The 1990s were a politically, socially, and economically turbulent decade for Cuba. It is neither surprising that it was during these years that the state amended its approach to religious freedom nor that it was during this time that Pope John Paul II made his historic visit to the island. Following the pontiff’s visit, the state amended the constitution and declared itself secular rather than Marxist, thus removing much of the stigma that believers had previously faced. In this article I analyze the relationship between the national cinema and religious freedom by showing that many Cuban directors challenged official constructs of religious belief both prior to and following the pope’s visit. I focus on two films—Tomás Guitiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Strawberry and Chocolate (1993) and Fernando Pérez’s Life is to Whistle (1998)—and argue that religious practice as imagined here constitutes a resistant act as it provides a path through which historically marginalized people can recover their voice. Nevertheless, this form of resistance does not aim to effect major political changes; instead, it simply attempts to uplift those whom the Cuban Revolution has failed to incorporate into the nation. Indeed, the directors of these films use their (religious) protagonists—each of whom fails to live up to the demands of the Revolution—to imagine a system of belief that accepts marginalized subjects without requiring them to change.
2015 •
This paper analyses three key films of the Maori Renaissance, which, in addition to being art forms in themselves, depict ritual song, traditional dance, martial arts, tattoos, carvings, and mythical storytelling. Moreover each film has both drawn from and generated debate about the roles of religion, ritual and cultural performance in the negotiation of resources and identity for indigenous peoples against a background of post-colonial late capitalism. In Once Were Warriors, the central problem is conceived in terms of a loss of the traditional means of disciplining male aggression and attempts to revitalize them, including the teaching of haka (war dance) and the martial arts of taiaha (spear) to young offenders and the adoption of tattoos resembling traditional moko by local gangs. Whale Rider in contrast, has a peaceful rural setting but also emphasizes the teaching of haka to young males as an initiatory rite for potential leaders. Both films have been criticized for their emphasis on gender and their silence regarding economic and political forces, although Whale Rider's enactment of mythical connections between human and animal communities suggests subtlety in the transmission of animist religion. Te Rua, exploring Maori efforts to repatriate ancestral carvings from European museums, suggests the power of the carvings themselves and highlights the virtues of consulting with one's community more than martial arts. Taken together, these films suggest that while traditional myth, art, and ritual are central to the shaping of Maori post-colonial identities, their precise role is a subject of intense scrutiny and debate.
Journal of Religion & Film 20:3
Journal of Religion & Film - Review of Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream (Oct 2016)Choice Reviews Online
Screen Jesus: portrayals of Christ in television and film2013 •
Journal of Religion and Film
"'I am that Very Witch': On The Witch, Feminism, and Not Surviving Patriarchy"2018 •
Journal of Religion and Film
The Roles Of Violence in Recent Biblical Cinema: The Passion, Noah, And Exodus: Gods And Kings2016 •
2016 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Enlightenments: The Interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism on Screen2016 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Visual Grandeur, Imagined Glory: Identity Politics and Hindu Nationalism in Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat2018 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Humanity's Second Chance: Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) as an Environmental Cinematic Midrash2018 •
Journal of Religion and Film
“Aftertones of Infinity”: Biblical and Darwinian Evocations in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and To the Wonder2016 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Examining the Critical Role American Popular Film Continues to Play in Maintaining the Muslim Terrorist Image, Post 9/112016 •
2016 •
Environment, Space, Place
How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change2016 •
2016 •
2016 •
2018 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Sundance 2016: Celebrating the Diversity of Independent Cinema2016 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Teaching Field of Dreams as Cosmogonic Myth2016 •
Journal of Religion & Film
On the Pedagogical Benefits of Using John Woo's The Killer as a Model of René Girard's Theory on Religion and Violence2001 •
Journal of Religion and Film
An Interview with Agnieszka Smoczynska, Director of The Lure2016 •
Journal of Religion and Film
Report from Sundance TwentyTen: Religion in Independent Film2016 •