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This investigation into the little-known genre of mission-oriented films uncovers how Protestant missionaries overseas sought to bring back motion picture footage from remote parts of the world. In the broader religious community, mission films aimed to educate congregants back home about efforts to evangelize communities around the world. This book, however, demonstrates the larger impact of mission films on American visual culture. The evolution and development of the genre is highlighted from an early emphasis on "foreign views" in the 1910s, to interwar films providing a more detailed look at how mission stations functioned in far-flung lands, to Cold War productions which at times functioned as veritable propaganda tools parroting anti-communist discourse emanating from the CIA.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
Part I-Putting Faith in Film: Mainline Protestants and the New Media
One. deleteThe "Scientific Gradation of Vice"
Two. deleteThe Screen Sermon
Three. deleteLocation, Location, Location
Part II-The Biggest, the Best, and the Most Remarkable: Foreign Views and the Evangelization of the World, 1908-1919
Four. deleteBringing the Missionary Film Genre into Focus
Five. delete"The World" in Pictures
Six. deleteMissionary Film Companies and Ecumenical Partnerships in the Mid-1910s
Seven. deleteCinema and the Sunday School Movement
Eight. deleteMissions Accomplished in the East
Part III-Putting the Reels in Mission: From Evangelization to Mission Work in the Interwar Years
Nine. deletePost-World War I: The Challenges of Ecumenism
Ten. deleteGoing It Alone
Eleven. deleteRank Amateurs, Radical Missionaries, Traveling Pastors and Lone Wolves
Twelve. deleteThe Expanding Genre in the Post-World War I Era
Thirteen. deleteEcumenism Revisited
Part IV-New Frontiers: Evangelicals, Cold Wars and the Institutionalization of the Genre
Fourteen. deleteThe Institutionalization of the Missionary Film
Fifteen. deleteGo Pro: Paul Gebauer, Henri Ferger, Alan Shilin and the Professionalization of the Genre
Sixteen. deleteThe Geopolitics of Missionary Filmmaking
Seventeen. deleteEvangelicals, Cold Warriors and Other Soldiers of the Faith
Eighteen. deleteHeroes, Martyrs, Winged Messengers, and Journeys Long and Arduous
Conclusion: A Half-Century of Missionary Filmmaking
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Glenn Reynolds is a professor of history at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York. He specializes in forgotten cinemas at the margins, especially colonial cinema in Africa, and the global proliferation of missionary films. He lives in Ossining, New York.
