Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4808-4505
Abstract
This article examines how documentary film attempts to represent mystical experience through comparative analysis of Parviz Kimiavi's The Garden of Stones (1976) and American documentaries featuring Samuel Lewis, particularly Sunseed (1973). Rather than assuming terms like "sacred" or "authentic," the study grounds its analysis in empirical definitions from William James, historical scholarship by Carl Ernst and Annemarie Schimmel, and literary theory from Fatemeh Keshavarz. Through detailed examination of specific scenes—Darvish Khan hanging stones from dead trees, Lewis leading ecstatic dances—the article demonstrates how different cinematic strategies approach documentary's epistemological limits when confronting ineffable experience.
The analysis corrects historical misunderstandings about Sufism's relationship to Islamic orthodoxy and reason, documenting how figures like Al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi synthesized philosophy with mysticism centuries before Western encounter. Close reading of cinematographic techniques reveals how Kimiavi employs deep staging, extended duration, and visual paradox to create contemplative space, while the American films use participatory camera work, somatic sound design, and temporal compression to generate ecstatic involvement.
Both films engage critically with spiritual commodification—Kimiavi through narrative depicting his subject's family monetizing mystical vision, the Lewis documentaries through their own transformation of practice into media content. The article argues these films expand documentary epistemology by transmitting experiential knowledge through formal means that affect viewers beneath conceptual thought, suggesting cinema's capacity lies not in capturing mystical reality but in creating conditions where multiple realities coexist. The persistent scholarly neglect of Sunseed compared to extensive analysis of Kimiavi reflects academic biases about what constitutes serious religious cinema, a gap this comparison addresses through equal analytical attention to both approaches.
Recommended Citation
Abedini, Hessam
(2026)
"Documenting the Ineffable: A Comparative Analysis of Mystical Representation in Kimiavi’s The Garden of Stones and Western Sufi Documentary,"
Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 30:
Iss.
2, Article 2.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol30/iss2/2
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
VolNum
30