The Religion and Film Reader

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.

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.

Jolyon Mitchell is senior lecturer at New College, Edinburgh University. His previous publications include Visually Speaking, Mediating Religion, and Media Violence and Christian Ethics. S. Brent Plate is Associate Professor of Religion and the Visual Arts at Texas Christian University. His recent publications include Blasphemy: Art that Offends, Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics and Representing Religion in World Cinema.