Publication Type

Book Chapter

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

12-2024

Abstract

This chapter explores the correlations between religion and film studies and the geographies of religion. Using perspectives from the latter to foreground overlooked aspects of the former, I argue that investigations of the religious problematic via film are productively enriched when refocused on the question: what kind of space does religious cinema constitute? Rather than offering a single answer, I highlight the various phenomenological, ritual, and ethical spaces that cinema—comprising production, text, and reception—can construct. In the first section, I briefly trace the “spatial turns” that religion and film scholarship has taken since its inception, observing the field’s evolving geographical and global consciousness over the past four decades. Next, I consider how scholars of religion have adopted spatial sensibilities when reflecting on the nature of cinematic experience and activities. In contrast to earlier concerns with the theological and hierophanic potential of individual films, recent approaches emphasize the material and place-making aspects of religious-cinematic practices. In the third section, with reference to the work of Kim Knott, Veronica della Dora, and the Malaysian-Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, I zoom in on two themes—religiosity/secularity and pilgrimage/movement—that further reveal the cinema as a site of religion-making in the contemporary world.

Keywords

Material religion, Media production and reception, Religion and film, Secularism, World cinema

Discipline

Film and Media Studies | Religion

Research Areas

Sociology; Humanities

Areas of Excellence

Growth in Asia

Publication

Handbook of the Geographies of Religion

Editor

KONG, Lily; WOOD, Orlando; TSE, Justin K. H.

First Page

1233

Last Page

1247

ISBN

9783031648106

Identifier

10.1007/978-3-031-64811-3

Publisher

Springer

City or Country

Cham

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64811-3

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