Religious traditions have provided a seemingly endless supply of subject
matter for film, from the Ten Commandments to the Mahabharata . At the
same time, film production has engendered new religious practices and
has altered existing ones, from the cult following of The Rocky Horror
Picture Show to the 2001 Australian census in which 70,000 people
indicated their religion to be 'Jedi Knight'. Representing Religion in
World Cinema begins with these mutual transformations as the
contributors query the two-way interrelations between film and religion
across cinemas of the world. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary by
nature, this collection by an international group of scholars draws on
work from religious studies, film studies, and anthropology, as well as
theoretical impulses in performance, gender, ethnicity, colonialism, and
postcolonialism.