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
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
1940, John Ford, USA, 129 min.
With Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell
John Steinbeck’s classic novel, detailing the grueling trek of the Joad family from Dust Bowl-devastated Oklahoma to an elusive Promised Land in California, became a classic movie, with tough and poetic direction by John Ford, brilliant cinematography by Gregg Toland, and career-defining performances by Henry Fonda as the decent ex-con Tom Joad and Jane Darwell as the enduring matriarch Ma Joad. 35mm print courtesy of Harvard Film Archive. (MR)
Tuesday, October 4, 6:00 pm
A MAN ESCAPED
(UN CONDAMN� A MORT S’EST �CHAPP�)
1956, Robert Bresson, France, 100 min.
With Francois Leterrier, Charles le Clainche
Often cited as Bresson’s most accessible film, A MAN ESCAPED combines elements of the then-popular prison genre with Bresson’s personal vision of earthly spirituality. Incarcerated and condemned to death by the Gestapo, a French Resistance fighter concentrates with single-minded intensity on a daring escape plan. Bresson creates a modern parable of the attainment of grace, as the hero’s quest leads him to the brink of a perilous “leap of faith.” In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (FC)
Friday, October 7, 6:00 pm;
Tuesday, October 11, 6:00 pm
Original uncut version!
STROMBOLI
1949, Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 107 min.
With Ingrid Bergman, Mario Vitale
For many years STROMBOLI was available only in a butchered and almost incomprehensible 81-minute version; we are pleased to present the full-length version of Rossellini’s masterpiece in a rare 35mm print. Bergman plays a Czech refugee whose Italian husband takes her home to his native village on a barren volcanic island where she encounters suspicion, coldness, and a centuries-old code to which she can never hope to conform. In Italian with English subtitles. (BS)
Friday, October 14, 6:00 pm;
Tuesday, October 18, 6:00 pm
THE MIRROR
(ZERKALO)
1974, Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia, 108 min.
With Margarita Terekhova
Tarkovsky’s most autobiographical film, THE MIRROR is a stunning mixture of dream and recollection, color and monochrome, mystical and physical images of nature. A man whom we do not see sifts through memories, fantasies, collective societal memories, and bits of his own melancholy present. Focusing on a woman who is at times a mother, at times a wife, the story moves from a prewar rural setting through two wars (the Spanish Civil War and World War II) to a postwar present. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (FC)
Saturday, October 22, 3:30 pm;
Tuesday, October 25, 6:00 pm
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
Upcoming films in The Religious Imagination:
November 4 and 8
HAIL MARY
1985, Jean-Luc Godard, France, 107 min.
November 11 and 15
THE LAST SUPPER
1977, Tom�s Guti�rrez Alea, Cuba, 110 min.
November 18 and 22
DOOR TO THE SKY
1989, Farida Ben Lyzaid, Morocco, 107 min.
November 25 and 29
GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI
1999, Jim Jarmusch, USA, 116 min.
December 9 and 13
YEELEN
1987, Souleymane Ciss�, Mali, 105 min.
