Journal of Religion & Film

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April 2013

Introduction

We are pleased to now publish the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Religion and Film in its entirety. In addition to the Sundance and Slamdance 2013 reviews, we have additional film reviews, and eight new articles. Christopher Barnett and Bertha Manninen have added contributions to the scholarship about filmmaker Terrence Malick, and especially The Tree of Life. Peter Doebler and Justin Ponder have both written articles that deal with Roberto Rosellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis (1950), among other films; this seems especially appropriate as the legacy of St. Francis has been considered anew in the light of the new Pope’s choice of name. In addition, Adam Porter writes on Satan figures in film; Richard Blake, on the Catholicism of filmmaker Leo McCarey; Yoshiko Okuyama, on the Shinto and Buddhist concepts in Departures (2008); and Vaughan Roberts, on the films of the Coen brothers. I am also happy to announce that we publish here the text of all the presentations from a session at the 2012 American Academy of Religion meeting, “Facing Forward, Looking Back: Religion and Film Studies in the Last Decade.” The session focused on four recent books in the field of Religion and Film: John Lyden’s Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals (NYU, 2003); S. Brent Plate’s Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World (Wallflower Press, 2009); Antonio Sison’s World Cinema, Theology, and the Human: Humanity in Deep Focus (Routledge, 2012); and Sheila Nayar’s The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the ‘Genuinely’ Religious Film (Continuum, 2012). We have reproduced the remarks of the authors as well as the moderator, Joseph Kickasola, and the three respondents, Stefanie Knauss, Rachel Wagner, and Jolyon Thomas. We know you will enjoy reading the stimulating exchange of ideas from this fine group of scholars. John Lyden, Editor