Film - Think

There are several European/Scandinavian organizations involved with film, criticism, and theology that I like to keep tabs on.

1. The Media and Theology Project, primarily helmed by Jolyon Mitchell, is an active research community hosting conferences, inviting weekly papers, and generally just digging into global media culture on a consistent basis. The recently published Religion and Film Reader (Mitchell and Plate) is an indication of the caliber of their output, and at this point is the best textbook on the topic available.

2. Deus X Cinema in Iceland is an up and coming organizer of events, conferences, and published material (having already published books on Tarkovsky and others). They are plugged into the Scandinavian film scene particularly well, a rich resource for discussion. They provide an excellent template for developing local communities of interest in theology and film.

3. The Centre for the Study of the Bible in Theology and Culture in Denmark hosted a successful conference in 2007 for European scholars of theology and culture. From that conference report:

"Within theology and biblical studies it is often felt that the Bible has vanished from modern society. As a consequence of the ongoing secularisation a fatal loss of tradition has occurred and knowledge of the Bible has diminished or even disappeared completely from the consciousness of modern man. In this situation the biblical scholar stands in front of an enormous didactical task. He or she is to re-establish the necessary knowledge of the Bible. This is not primarily seen as a theological or religious task, but as a cultural necessity since most of the European culture will be a closed country if you are without understanding of the biblical references. However, the very preliminary studies of the reception of the Bible in contemporary art and culture conducted by the Centre, does not confirm this gloomy picture.

We find that the Bible is alive and well – out there. I would even maintain that there is a growing interest in the Bible among contemporary artists. And in popular culture biblical references form parts of the vast reservoir of cultural identity markers and figures of recognition that facilitate communication with the public. We also find that the Bible is received and understood in ways quite distant from the orthodoxies of the scholarly world and the Church. The Bible is not first and foremost seen as a historical document or an authoritative canon, it is part of the cultural intertext where it appears together with popular figures from the cartoons and the ‘classics’ of literature and film. Or it is seen as referring to deep religious experiences that might inspire modern artists in their search for authentic spirituality.

At the Centre we think that it is paramount for biblical scholars to get in touch with these‘unauthorized’ ways of understanding and making use of the Bible."

This resonates very strongly with the way I have been looking through cinema for "unauthorized" uses of Jesus imagery (what I think of as non-canonical Jesus films), and represents an advanced pattern of thinking about the use of the Bible in film and culture that hasn't yet begun to gain traction in the US. Over time it will, especially as theology becomes more savvy at using criticism to access images in culture that have been passed over as too abstract or antagonistic (such as the appearance of Christ in Bad Lieutenant).

4. INTERFILM has been around for ages, discovering and celebrating spirituality in international cinema for decades. (Here is a survey of its border-crossing and ideology-transcending history, which in the mid-90's turned its attention back to European cinema.) In an address during the 2003 award ceremony, INTERFILM's then president offered the rich expository comments on The Man Without a Past, truly sermonic in their appeal:

"After a while, you ask yourself if it is not even a question of your own tired and desolate perspective that you tend to see so many things rather as a heap of rubbish instead of as a fertile garden, as a garden full of flowers even? This film offers signs of a world of resurrection. A world that I sometimes dream of and where I sometimes am. The miracle of the other life that begins already when the one who has been declared dead undoes his bandages and has to get some good sleep at first. Thus, the thoughts wander to and fro between the stories of the film and the stories that the Christian faith lives of."

At the end of this address, he offered what is one of the best apologies for the study of theology and film I have encountered, speaking prophetically to the potential laziness of each culture:

"And one thing will remain the same: if film is really a work of art and church stays with what it should, then film and church will never be identical. Film participates in the specific character of the arts that is determined by structural openness and polyvalence. Esthetical experience is – at the core of its understanding of itself – much more interested in stimulating questions than in answering them, in confusing rather than in calming, in the search for meaning rather than in the teaching of meaning. Yet thus, the esthetical experience – in films too – creates a tension with regard to the position of the church that I also think is not to be given up. Church and theology are and will be related to a revelation of history, they have to tend to a certain non-opposition at least, to a unity of world and the experience of God, to the answers. Thus, there remains a border between the two different horizons of experience. But just as the acceptance of borders is a part of man's life, so is the crossing of borders. And thus, the vivid crossing of borders between film and theology may save the film from the banality of cinema and festival business, and it may also save the church from the deep sleep of the habitual and the always known."

If there are some EU/Scandinavian resources that I should be watching, but am not, please let me know so that I can add them to the list. I find it helpful to venture out of the American scene while I can, seeing movements and ideas in action that haven't stirred the waters in North America yet.