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This book examines postmodern theology and how it relates to the cinematic style of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Luis Buñuel. Ponder demonstrates how these filmmakers forefront religious issues in their use of mise en scène. He investigates both the technical qualities of film "flesh" and its theological features. The chapters show how art cinema uses sound, editing, lighting, and close-ups in ways that critique doctrine's authoritarianism, as well as philosophy's individualism, to suggest postmodern theologies that emphasize community. Through this book we learn how the cinematic style of modernist auteurs relates to postmodern theology and how the industry of art cinema constructs certain kinds of film-watching subjectivity.
List of contents
1. Introduction: The Word Was Made Film.- 2. "All is Grace": Sound and Grace in Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest.- 3. "Life. Yes. Life.": Editing and Miracles in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet.- 4. "The Whole Earth is Full of His Glory": Lighting and Suffering in Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light.- 5. "No One Must Know of This": Close-up and Heresy in Luis Buñuel's The Milky Way.- 6. Conclusion: "...And Dwelt Among Us".
About the author
Justin Ponder is Associate Professor of English at Marian University, USA. He has written on theology and film in the Journal of Religion and Film, Religion and the Arts, and Imaginatio et Ratio.
Summary
This book examines postmodern theology and how it relates to the cinematic style of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Luis Buñuel. Ponder demonstrates how these filmmakers forefront religious issues in their use of mise en scène. He investigates both the technical qualities of film “flesh” and its theological features. The chapters show how art cinema uses sound, editing, lighting, and close-ups in ways that critique doctrine’s authoritarianism, as well as philosophy’s individualism, to suggest postmodern theologies that emphasize community. Through this book we learn how the cinematic style of modernist auteurs relates to postmodern theology and how the industry of art cinema constructs certain kinds of film-watching subjectivity.
