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Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema

2022-11-14 Religion
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Release : 2022-11-14
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 916/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema by : Melissa Croteau

Download or read book Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema written by Melissa Croteau. This book was released on 2022-11-14. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual symbols, and religious concepts that are embedded in the secular framework of Japanese films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds, particularly during the Heisei era (1989–2019), when Japan experienced severe economic hardship and devastating natural disasters. The book’s approach to aesthetics and religion employs the multifaceted concepts of ma (structuring intervals, liminal space-time), kū (emptiness, sky), mono no aware (compassionate sensibility, resigned sadness), and musubi (generative interconnection), examining the dynamic, evolving nature of these ancient principles that are at once spiritual, aesthetic, and philosophical. Scholars and enthusiasts of Japanese cinema (live action and anime), religion and film, cinematic aesthetics, and the relationship between East Asian religions and the arts will find fresh perspectives on these in this book, which moves beyond conventional notions of transcendental style and essentialized approaches to the multivalent richness of Japanese aesthetics.

Transcendence and Spirituality in Chinese Cinema

2020-05-27 Religion
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Release : 2020-05-27
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 924/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Transcendence and Spirituality in Chinese Cinema by : Kris H.K Chong

Download or read book Transcendence and Spirituality in Chinese Cinema written by Kris H.K Chong. This book was released on 2020-05-27. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a framework by which a global audience might think theologically about contemporary films produced in mainland China by Chinese directors. Up to this point the academic discipline of Christian theology and film has focussed predominantly on Western cinema, and as a result, has missed out the potential insights offered by Chinese spirituality on film. Mainland Chinese films, produced within the nation’s social structure, offer an excellent lingua franca of China. Illuminating the spiritual imagination of Chinese filmmakers and their yearning for transcendence, the book uses Richard A. Blake’s concept of afterimage to analyse the potential theological implications of their films. It then brings Jürgen Moltmann’s "immanent-transcendence" and Robert K. Johnston’s "God’s wider Presence" into conversation with Confucianist and Daoist ideas of there being, spirituality-speaking, "More in Life than Meets the Eye" than simply material existence. This all combines to move beyond film and allow for a Western audience to gain a new perspective on Chinese culture and traditions. One that uses familiar Western terms, while avoiding the imposition of a Western mindset. This is a new perspective on cinema, religion and Chinese culture that will be of keen interest to scholars of Religion and Film, Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology of Religion and Chinese Studies.

Theology and Survival Movies

2023-03-03 Religion
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Release : 2023-03-03
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 960/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Theology and Survival Movies by : Ioan Buteanu

Download or read book Theology and Survival Movies written by Ioan Buteanu. This book was released on 2023-03-03. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an innovative analysis of the survival movie genre from an Orthodox Christian anthropological perspective. Grounded in the Orthodox tradition, the approach builds from the first chapter of Genesis where man is described as made in the ‘image’ and after the ‘likeness’ of God. It offers a nuanced theological exploration of the concept of the survival movie and examines a number of significant cinematic creations, illustrating how issues of survival intersect romantic, Western, science fiction and war films. The author reflects on how survival movies offer a path for the study of human nature given they depict people in crisis situations where they may reveal their true characters. As well as discussing the role of a ‘limit situation’ as a narrative element, the book highlights the spiritual aspect of survival and points to the common hope in survival movies for something more than biological survival. It is valuable reading for scholars working in the field of religion and film.

The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables

2022-09-30 Religion
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Release : 2022-09-30
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 787/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables by : Joel Mayward

Download or read book The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables written by Joel Mayward. This book was released on 2022-09-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables examines the work of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have been celebrated for their powerfully affecting social realist films. Though the Dardenne brothers’ films rarely mention religion or God, they have received wide recognition for their moral complexity and spiritual resonance. This book brings the Dardennes’ filmography into consideration with theological aesthetics, Christian ethics, phenomenological film theory, and continental philosophy. The author explores the brothers’ nine major films—beginning with The Promise (1996) and culminating in Young Ahmed (2019)—through the hermeneutics of philosopher Paul Ricoeur. By using Ricoeur’s description of "parable" as a "narrative-metaphor" which generates an existential limit-experience, Joel Mayward crafts an innovative Ricoeurian hermeneutic for making theological interpretations of cinema. Drawing upon resources from three disciplinary spheres—theology, philosophy, and film studies—in a dynamic interweaving approach, Mayward proposes that the Dardennes create postsecular cinematic parables which evoke theological and ethical responses in audiences’ imaginations through the brothers’ distinctive filmmaking style, what is termed "transcendent realism." The book ultimately demonstrates how the Dardenne brothers are truly doing, not merely depicting, theology and ethics through the cinematic form—it presents film as theology, what Mayward refers to as "theocinematics." This is valuable reading for scholars of theology, philosophy, and film studies, as well as film critics and cinephiles interested in the cinema of the Dardenne brothers.

Through a Nuclear Lens

2024-05-01 Literary Criticism
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Release : 2024-05-01
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 857/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Through a Nuclear Lens by : Hannah Holtzman

Download or read book Through a Nuclear Lens written by Hannah Holtzman. This book was released on 2024-05-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Franco-Japanese coproduction Hiroshima mon amour (1959) is one of the most important films for global art cinema and for the French New Wave. In Through a Nuclear Lens, Hannah Holtzman examines this film and the transnational cycle it has inspired, as well as its legacy after the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. In a study that includes formal and theoretical analysis, archival research, and interviews, Holtzman shows the emergence of a new kind of nuclear film, one that attends to the everyday effects of nuclear disaster and its impact on our experience of space and time. The focus on Franco-Japanese exchange in cinema since the postwar period reveals a reorientation of the primarily aesthetic preoccupations in the tradition of Japonisme to center around technological and environmental concerns. The book demonstrates how French filmmakers, ever since Hiroshima mon amour, have looked to Japan in part to better understand nuclear uncertainty in France.

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