The Religion and Film Reader

by Jolyon Mitchell (Editor), S. Brent Plate (Editor)

Edited by leading experts in the field, The Film and Religion Reader brings together the key writings in this exciting and dynamic discipline. In over sixty interviews, essays and reviews from numerous directors, film critics and scholars, this eagerly anticipated anthology offers the most complete survey of this emerging field to date.

Film is now widely studied and researched in theology and religious studies departments, The Film and Religion Reader is therefore ideal for students and researchers, introduced and organized into the following thematic and chronological sections, each with an introduction by the editors:


the dawn of cinema: adherents and detractors
the birth of film theory: realism, formalism, and religious vision
directors and critics: global perspectives African and Middle-Eastern perspectives; Asian and Australisian perspectives; European perspectives; South and North American perspectives
theological and Biblical approaches to analysing film
recent reflections on the relation between religion and film.
This Reader brings together a huge amount of material in a student-friendly format and will be an invaluable resource for courses within both theology and religious studies.

496 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2007

Reviews

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes these kinds of academic readers can be a chore. They're incredibly useful, full of important information, key questions, and classic texts, and so they really do help guide a person through their introduction to a new field of inquiry; but often the work of completing such a reader is a chore, as there seems to be as much dry material as there is fascinating material in most of these volumes. This was an incredibly welcome exception to that trend. I think just about every piece in this collection felt essential, and none of them were dry, boring, or extraneous. I loved the variety of interviews, scholarly articles, reviews, and more reflective pieces that were collected in the book, reflecting a whole host of concerns, outlooks, beliefs, and approaches to the topic of religion and film. I don't think I would ever use the complete book as a text in a class, but there was enough material here that I'd feel comfortable giving it wholly over to the right students to think about and dissect even today, fairly decently removed from its publication and the examples of many of the films in its pages.