The Religious Imagination in Cinema
Lecturer: Jeffrey Skoller
From Sept. 6 through Dec. 13, the Gene Siskel Film Center offers a series of fourteen programs of films entitled The Religious Imagination in Cinema: Altered States & Sacred Blasphemies, with weekly lectures by Jeffrey Skoller, Associate Professor of Film, Video and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of Shadows Specters Shards: Making History in Avant-Grade Film.
The series is made possible in part through the sponsorship of American Airlines, the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Educational Underwriter, and is presented in cooperation with the School of the Art Institute’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism. Please note that, for the convenience of our audience, films are sometimes shown on both Friday and Tuesday; however, Jeffrey Skoller’s lectures accompany only the Tuesday screenings. Admission to all Religious Imagination programs is $4 to Film Center members; usual admission prices apply for non-members.
-- Martin Rubin
The art of Cinema emerged with the dawn of the 20th century, a moment when the cultural domination of religion was being deeply challenged. Modern developments in science, philosophy and politics changed forever age old questions of existence and thus the way artists continue to explore the problem of the ineffable through art. Defining the “religious imagination” in the broadest terms, this series looks at how film artists have used this most modern of art forms to explore what it is to think religiously in modern times. In doing so, such artists raise vital cultural questions which are at once philosophical, political, aesthetic and intensely personal. Often driven to create new cinematic forms to express their ideas more powerfully, some of the most radical filmmakers have used the film medium to evoke -- indeed create -- religious experiences for viewers. Others have used film to critique the often oppressive and hypocritical manifestations of religion. In the series we will try to understand, through the films and assigned readings, the ways in which the religious imagination of modern filmmakers addresses the problem of faith and the ineffable in the midst of the vast cultural, political and technological changes that have gone on since the invention of cinema 100 years ago.
-- Jeffrey Skoller
film descriptions
Avant-Garde Program
1946-69, Various directors, USA, total 83 min.
Four seminal classics from the American avant-garde: Kenneth Anger’s Black Mass of mind-blowing multiple imagery, INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER (1969, 12 min.); Maya Deren’s trance-like rite of passage RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1946, 15 min.); Stan Brakhage’s meditation on death, decay, and transfiguration SIRIUS REMEMBERED (1959, 12 min.), and Michael Snow’s structuralist chamber mystery WAVELENGTH (1967, 45 min.). 16mm. (MR)
Tuesday, November 1, 6:00 pm
HAIL MARY
(JE VOUS SALUE, MARIE)
1985, Jean-Luc Godard, France, 82 min.
With Myriem Roussel, Thierry Rode
“One of the most radiant and tenderly religious movies ever made.”--David Denby, New York
HAIL MARY received a Papal denunciation, generated worldwide protests, and won the International Catholic Cinema Office Award. Almost overlooked in all the furor was the film itself, a serene, sensitive, and lyrical work that translates the Virgin Birth into tangible, contemporized terms, with Mary as a basketball-playing gas station attendant who receives the Annunciation by jetliner. In French with English subtitles. 35mm
Preceded by Anne-Marie Miéville’s companion-piece THE BOOK OF MARY (1984, France, 25 min.), about a pre-teen girl whose parents are separating. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
Friday, November 4, 6:00 pm;
Tuesday, November 8, 6:00 pm
THE LAST SUPPER
(LA ÚLTIMA CENA)
1977, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 110 min.
With Mario Acea, Mario Balmaseda
“A strong, beautifully photographed, and disturbing film.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
In 18th-century Cuba, a pious slaveholder invites twelve of his slaves to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper. The unforeseen result of this lesson in Christian charity is a bloody slave revolt and its even bloodier suppression. The film’s centerpiece is the lengthy supper scene, a sardonic tour de force that combines the blasphemous ironies of VIRIDIANA with an ominous undercurrent of political reckoning. In Spanish with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
Friday, November 11, 6:00 pm;
Tuesday, November 15, 6:00 pm
DOOR TO THE SKY
(BAB AL-SAMA MAFTUH)
1989, Farida Ben Lyziad, Morocco, 107 min.
With Zakia Tahri, Chaabia Laadraoui
“Shows us the Islamic religion and Arab women’s issues with a thoroughness and bluntness and sympathy that seem genuinely surprising.”--Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
Brought back to her native land by her father’s death, a young Paris-based Moroccan woman reestablishes contact with her Islamic roots and attempts to put her new-found faith into action by opening a women’s shelter, only to meet opposition from her family. In her impressive first film, director Ben Lyziad strikes a delicate balance among feminism, traditionalism, and humanism by drawing upon a Sufi strain of Islam. In Arabic and French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR).<
Friday, November 18, 8:00 pm;
Tuesday, November 22, 6:00 pm
GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI
1999, Jim Jarmusch, USA, 116 min.
With Forest Whitaker, Henry Silva
Zen meets hip-hop in Jarmusch’s house mix of western, gangster, and samurai films. With way-cool gravitas, Forest Whitaker plays an inner-city hit-man who communicates by carrier pigeon and draws spiritual nourishment from the 18th-century samurai bible, the Hagakure. Along the Way, he encounters a precocious black girl, a Haitian ice-cream vendor (Isaach de Bankolé), a fellow pilgrim named Camouflage Samurai (RZA, who also supplied the film’s dreamy score), and an assortment of seedy Mafiosi. 35mm. (MR)
Friday, November 25, 7:30 pm;
Sunday, November 27, 3:00 pm;
Tuesday, November 29, 6:00 pm
Upcoming films in The Religious Imagination:
YEELEN1987, Souleymane Cissé, Mali, 105 min
