Cinema Has Not Yet Been Invented: André Bazin’s Christ-Based Ontology of Moving Images
This article explores, through the writings of French critic André Bazin, how cinema finds its roots in the capacity of documenting traces of the world and in the osmotic relationship between an event and its record. Due to its ontological status, photography echoes an incarnational and Christologic...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[publisher not identified]
2023
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| In: |
Christian scholar's review
Year: 2023, Volume: 52, Issue: 2, Pages: 7-20 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history ZG Media studies; Digital media; Communication studies |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article explores, through the writings of French critic André Bazin, how cinema finds its roots in the capacity of documenting traces of the world and in the osmotic relationship between an event and its record. Due to its ontological status, photography echoes an incarnational and Christological model, and cinema becomes a spiritual mediator between the passage of time and the inevitability of death. Influenced by Gabriel Marcel’s approach to existentialism and by Emmanuel Mounier concept of proper orientation, Bazin wrote extensively about religious films, while also dedicating attention to those auterist movies that challenged him spiritually or that he did not fully comprehend a priori, either at a technical level or regarding their moral contents. At times discussions about film and religion imposed a structure of beliefs that limited the possibility of fully articulating cinema’s transformative power. The antidote to dogmatic views can be found in Bazin’s emphasis on active spectatorship and his awareness that, although cinema may embrace new technologies, abandoning and refashioning old ones, it is permeated by religious values that can be communicated through an aesthetic use of the medium. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Christian scholar's review
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