By David Rankin
January 29, 2024
This book explores the representation of the idea or theme of redemption in contemporary, popular film. The discussion focuses primarily on the work of three directors – Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese and Kore-eda Hirokazu – but also considers a few films from other directorial hands. David Rankin...
By Rebecca Ver Straten-McSparran
May 31, 2023
This book offers a bold and dynamic examination of Lars von Trier’s cinema by interweaving philosophy and theology with close attention to aesthetics through style and narrative. It explores the prophetic voice of von Trier's films, juxtaposing them with Ezekiel's prophecy and Ricoeur’s symbols of ...
By Ioan Buteanu
March 03, 2023
This book provides an innovative analysis of the survival movie genre from an Orthodox Christian anthropological perspective. Grounded in the Orthodox tradition, the approach builds from the first chapter of Genesis where man is described as made in the ‘image’ and after the ‘likeness’ of God. It ...
Edited
By Kristian Petersen
January 09, 2023
Many global film industries fail in expanding the role of Muslims on screen. Too often they produce a dichotomy between "good" and "bad" Muslims, limiting the narrative domain to issues of national security, war, and terrorism. Naturally, much of the previous scholarship on Muslims in film focused ...
By Melissa Croteau
November 14, 2022
This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual symbols, and religious concepts that are embedded in the secular framework of Japanese films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by directors Akira Kurosawa, ...
By Joel Mayward
September 30, 2022
The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables examines the work of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have been celebrated for their powerfully affecting social realist films. Though the Dardenne brothers’ films rarely mention religion or God, they have received wide recognition for ...
By Kris H.K Chong
April 29, 2022
This book provides a framework by which a global audience might think theologically about contemporary films produced in mainland China by Chinese directors. Up to this point the academic discipline of Christian theology and film has focussed predominantly on Western cinema, and as a result, has ...
By David Rankin
July 18, 2019
This book explores how post-death existence is represented in popular film, looking at issues such as continuity, personal identity, and the nature of existence beyond the grave. Film often returns to the theme of dying, death and the afterlife, both directly and indirectly, because there are very ...
By Milja Radovic
February 12, 2018
Increasingly, as the production, distribution and audience of films cross national boundaries, film scholars have begun to think in terms of ‘transnational’ rather than national cinema. This book is positioned within the emerging field of transnational cinema, and offers a groundbreaking study of ...
By Anthony Mills
February 05, 2018
Stan Lee, who was the head writer of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, co-created such popular heroes as Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and Daredevil. This book traces the ways in which American theologians and comic books of the era were not only both saying ...
Edited
By Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, Jon Morgan
May 10, 2017
This collection of essays by biblical scholars is the first book-length treatment of the 2014 film Noah, directed by Darren Aronofsky. The film has proved to be of great interest to scholars working on the interface between the Bible and popular culture, not only because it was heralded as the ...
Edited
By Costica Bradatan, Camil Ungureanu
April 27, 2017
The religious landscape in Europe is changing dramatically. While the authority of institutional religion has weakened, a growing number of people now desire individualized religious and spiritual experiences, finding the self-complacency of secularism unfulfilling. The "crisis of religion" is ...