This volume looks at the ways in which the Christian concept of redemption has been represented in film. Concentrating on film noir and the work of Martin Scorsese, the book argues that the characteristic themes of noir confront religious issues.

A book for everyone whos ever flipped past the religious channel

In this book Martien Brinkman explores the Jesus incognito as found in Western film, literature, and the visual arts since 1960. His interest here is focused primarily on indirect references to the Jesus figure. To his surprise, he found an abundance of allusions to Jesus in key figures in modern art. This confirmed his view that film, literature, and the visual arts make a substantial contribution, even in secular Western culture, to continuing reflection on Jesus’ significance. Brinkman finds important characteristics of a hidden Christ in films by Gabriel Axel, Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Lars von Trier, novels by Peter De Vries, J.M. Coetzee, and Arnon Grunberg, poems by Les Murray and Czeslaw Milosz, and paintings by Andy Warhol, Harald Duwe, and Frans Franciscus. He defines a hidden Christ as a fictional human individual who can be seen as a new embodiment of the meaning that can be attributed in the present to the biblical figure of Jesus. The hidden Christ is therefore a contemporized Jesus figure. This book will be of interest for everyone who shares Brinkman’s quest for this Jesus incognito.

Jesus films arose with cinema itself. Richard Walsh and Jeffrey L. Staley introduce students to these films with a general overview of the Jesus film tradition and with specific analyses of 22 of its most influential exemplars, stretching from La vie du Christ (1906) to Mary Magdalene (2018). The introduction to each film includes discussion of plot, characters, visuals, appeal to authority, and cultural location as well as consideration of the director's (and/or other filmmakers') achievements and style. Several film chapters end with reflections on problematic issues bedeviling the tradition, such as cultural imperialism and patriarchy. To assist teachers and researchers, each chapter includes a listing of DVD chapters and the approximate “time” (for both DVDs and streaming platforms) at which key film moments occur. The book also includes a Gospels Harmony cataloging the time at which key gospel incidents appear in these films. Extensive endnotes point readers to other important work on the tradition and specific films. While the authors strive to set the Jesus film tradition within cinema and its interpretation, the DVD/streaming listing and the Gospels Harmony facilitate the comparison of these films to gospel interpretation and the Jesus tradition.

Screening the Afterlife is a unique and fascinating exploration of the ‘last things’ as envisaged by modern filmmakers. Drawing on a range of films from Flatliners and What Dreams May Come to Working Girl and The Shawshank Redemption, it offers the first comprehensive examination of death and the afterlife within the growing field of religion and film. Topics addressed include: the survival of personhood after death the language of resurrection and immortality Near-Death Experiences and Mind-Dependent Worlds the portrayal of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. Students taking courses on eschatology will find this a stimulating and thought provoking resource, while scholars will relish Deacy’s theological insight and understanding.

This book explores the theological power of film and seeks to render a properly theological account of cinematic art. It considers: What theology and theological practice does cinematic art give rise to? What are the perceptual and affective potentials of film for theology, and what, if anything, is theological about the cinematic medium itself? The author argues that film is a fundamentally embodied art form, a haptic and somatic medium of perception-cum-expression. This, combined with the distinct temporal aesthetic of film, invests cinema with profound theological potentials. The chapters explore these potentials through theological-cinematic analysis, emphasising the themes of encounter, embodiment, time, and contemplation, as well as three intimately connected doctrines of Christian theology: creation, incarnation, and eschatology. Throughout the book, the films and writings of the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky emerge as a singular illustration of the theological power of film, becoming a crucial resource for theologicalcinematic analysis.

Religion has had been foundational in shaping Italy. Home to the Vatican State, the Italian peninsula is the religious centre for one billion Catholics globally. It is also increasingly home to those of other faiths, especially Islam. Italy’s development as a contemporary post-secular and multi-religious society is fraught and fascinating. The recent resurgence of religious discourse is a sign of what German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, has defined as the post-secular condition. Habermas and others have questioned what most people in the West had, up to a few years ago, taken for granted: the unstoppable forward march of secularization and the subsequent marginalization of religion. Instead, one of the greatest global fault-lines in the contemporary world – the divide between absolutist, extremist Islamic faith and liberal, but Christian-inflected, secular values – has religious identity at its core. The first book-length study to examine religion in contemporary Italian cinema and television, Screening Religions in Italy spans genres such as horror, comedy, hagiopics, and TV fiction, and explores both commercial and art-house filmmaking. In a discussion of films and television series that range from Moretti’s Habemus Papam to Sorrentino’s The Young Pope, the author identifies two key issues: how Italian filmmaking constructs the continuing position of religion in the public sphere and why religion persists on Italian screens.