Dreams Doubt and Dread: The Spiritual in Film

Films are modern spiritual phenomena. They function as such in at least three profound ways: world projection thought experiments and catharsis (i.e. as dreams doubt and dread). Understanding film in this way allows for a theological account of the experience that speaks to the religious possibilities of film that far extend the portrayal of religious themes or content. Dreams Doubt and Dread: The Spiritual in Film aims to address films as spiritual experiences. This collection of short essays and dialogues examines films phenomenologically--through the experience of the viewer as an agent having been acted upon in the functioning of the film itself. Authors were invited to take one of the main themes and creatively consider how film in their experiences has provided opportunities for new modes of thinking. Contributors will then engaged one another in a dialogue about the similarities and differences in their descriptions of film as spiritual phenomena. The intended aim of this text is to shift contemporary theological film engagement away from a simple mode of analysis in which theological concepts are simply read into the film itself and begin to let films speak for themselves as profoundly spiritual experiences. Before it is anything else film is an event. Thus to truly understand the significance of the cinema in the contemporary world we must attend more fully to the concrete irreducibly embodied experience of filmgoing. By analyzing a wide array of films in explicitly phenomenological terms the essays in this volume grant us unique insight into the powerful enlightening and indeed even spiritual encounter that takes place within the cinematic event. I highly recommend it. --Kutter Callaway Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture Fuller Theological Seminary Zachary Settle is currently a PhD student in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt in the areas of political theology and political economy. He is the theology editor for The Other Journal. Taylor Worley holds a PhD in theology from the Institute for Theology Imagination and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews and serves as Associate Professor of Faith and Culture at Trinity International University in Deerfield IL.