The Bible, according to Milo Rau, “is a book about a guy losing his fight against state power,” but who ultimately prevails by establishing a movement. It is that struggle that he depicts in his new film, “The New Gospel.”
The documentary project is a kind of political Passion Play in which Cameroonian activist Yvan Sagnet portrays a Jesus who leads a revolt for the rights of migrants that were forced to flee their homelands and cross the Mediterranean only to be “enslaved” on the agricultural fields of southern Italy.
The film, which premieres in Venice Days, is part of Rau’s “Trilogy of Ancient Myths” that began with “Orestes in Mosul” and concludes next year with “Antigone in the Amazon.”
Thematically, “The New Gospel” also follows his 2018 work “The Congo Tribunal,” which examines the causes of the Congolese Civil War, a conflict he describes as the “biggest and bloodiest economic war in human history.
The documentary project is a kind of political Passion Play in which Cameroonian activist Yvan Sagnet portrays a Jesus who leads a revolt for the rights of migrants that were forced to flee their homelands and cross the Mediterranean only to be “enslaved” on the agricultural fields of southern Italy.
The film, which premieres in Venice Days, is part of Rau’s “Trilogy of Ancient Myths” that began with “Orestes in Mosul” and concludes next year with “Antigone in the Amazon.”
Thematically, “The New Gospel” also follows his 2018 work “The Congo Tribunal,” which examines the causes of the Congolese Civil War, a conflict he describes as the “biggest and bloodiest economic war in human history.
- 9/8/2020
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Documentarian Milo Rau's hybrid feature is part passion play and part call for compassion - nestling its biblical re-enactments within a framework of migrant workers campaigning for better living conditions and rights in Italy.
The southern Italian town of Matera has been used as a setting for the story of Jesus before - standing in for Jerusalem in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According To St Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ. Now Rau is on a quest for connection - between the religious story and the realities of the present, between the local population and the passion play he is staging and between those previous productions and his as stars from both those films - Enrique Irazoqui, who was Jesus in the Pasolini and Maia Morgernstern who played Gibson's Mary - both feature in lesser roles here.
It's a complex undertaking and while...
The southern Italian town of Matera has been used as a setting for the story of Jesus before - standing in for Jerusalem in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According To St Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ. Now Rau is on a quest for connection - between the religious story and the realities of the present, between the local population and the passion play he is staging and between those previous productions and his as stars from both those films - Enrique Irazoqui, who was Jesus in the Pasolini and Maia Morgernstern who played Gibson's Mary - both feature in lesser roles here.
It's a complex undertaking and while...
- 9/6/2020
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The French New Wave did not invent the idea of exploring a city through the wanderings of a couple—F.W. Murnau suggest as much from the Fox studio backlot in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Luchino Visconti offered his own glorious fairy tale stroll of Cinecittà’s Venice in White Nights—but that movement certainly provided an invigorating, youthful inspiration to an emerging generation of international filmmakers to orient their cinema to the relationships close to them and to streets they know so well.Thus we see Catalonian director José María Nunes’s 1966 masterpiece Noche de vinto tinto (Red Wine Night), which begins with a young woman distraught when her boyfriend breaks a promised date and, going out into the night, she attaches herself to a failed Romeo. The character of their meeting encapsulates all the oneiric, irrational, partially romantic, partially despondent tenor of the evening of bar hopping that follows,...
- 2/4/2016
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
And here we are. The day after Easter and we’ve reached the top of the mountain. While compiling this list, it’s become evident that true religious films just aren’t made anymore (and if they are, they are widely panned). That being said, religious themes exist in more mainstream movies than ever, despite there being no deliberate attempts to dub the films “religious.” Faith, God, whatever you want to call it – it’s influenced the history of nations, of politics, of culture, and of film. And these are the most important films in that wheelhouse. There are only two American films in the top 10, and only one of them is in English.
courtesy of hilobrow.com
10. Andrei Rublev (1966)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
A brutally expansive biopic about the Russian iconographer divided into nine chapters. Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) is portrayed not as a silent monk, but a motivated artist working against social ruin,...
courtesy of hilobrow.com
10. Andrei Rublev (1966)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
A brutally expansive biopic about the Russian iconographer divided into nine chapters. Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) is portrayed not as a silent monk, but a motivated artist working against social ruin,...
- 4/21/2014
- by Joshua Gaul
- SoundOnSight
The Gospel According to Matthew
Written and Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Italy, 1964
As an avowed Marxist, homosexual, and atheist, Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini may seem to some a dubious choice to have made one of the most austere, faithful, and simply one of the best films about the life and death of Jesus Christ. But, with The Gospel According to Matthew, from 1964, that’s exactly what the controversial filmmaker, poet, novelist, and theorist did. This gritty and unpolished depiction of the life of Christ contains many of the narrative hallmarks featured in other film versions of the same story: the virgin birth, the early miracles, the apostles, Christ’s persecution and, ultimately, the crucifixion. However, no other cinematic depiction of this well-known chronicle looks, sounds, or feels quite like this one.
Before making this film, Pasolini had directed his first feature, Accattone!, in 1961, followed by Mamma Roma, starring...
Written and Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Italy, 1964
As an avowed Marxist, homosexual, and atheist, Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini may seem to some a dubious choice to have made one of the most austere, faithful, and simply one of the best films about the life and death of Jesus Christ. But, with The Gospel According to Matthew, from 1964, that’s exactly what the controversial filmmaker, poet, novelist, and theorist did. This gritty and unpolished depiction of the life of Christ contains many of the narrative hallmarks featured in other film versions of the same story: the virgin birth, the early miracles, the apostles, Christ’s persecution and, ultimately, the crucifixion. However, no other cinematic depiction of this well-known chronicle looks, sounds, or feels quite like this one.
Before making this film, Pasolini had directed his first feature, Accattone!, in 1961, followed by Mamma Roma, starring...
- 3/8/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Gangs Of Wasseypur Part 2 | Stoker | Arbitrage | Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters | Caesar Must Die | The Bay | Sleep Tight | Broken City | Trashed | Safe Haven | Hi-So | Michael H. Profession: Director | The Gospel According To Matthew | The Attacks Of 26/11 | Acoustic Routes
Gangs Of Wasseypur Part 2 (18)
(Anurag Kashyap, 2012, Ind) Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Zeishan Quadri, Aditya Kumar, Huma Qureshi. 160 mins
It's over five hours long in all, but there's barely a slack moment in this exhilarating Indian epic as it races through generations of smalltown criminal, industrial and political enmity. Yes, it's violent, but like all great crime stories it's also a vibrant tapestry of family life and modern history, closer to Leone, Coppola or Tarantino than Bollywood.
Stoker (18)
(Park Chan-wook, 2013, Us/UK) Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode. 99 mins
The Oldboy director gives us a sensual, tantalisingly ambiguous thriller, centred on Wasikowska and her shifty smalltown family.
Arbitrage (15)
(Nicholas Jarecki, 2012, Us) Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling.
Gangs Of Wasseypur Part 2 (18)
(Anurag Kashyap, 2012, Ind) Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Zeishan Quadri, Aditya Kumar, Huma Qureshi. 160 mins
It's over five hours long in all, but there's barely a slack moment in this exhilarating Indian epic as it races through generations of smalltown criminal, industrial and political enmity. Yes, it's violent, but like all great crime stories it's also a vibrant tapestry of family life and modern history, closer to Leone, Coppola or Tarantino than Bollywood.
Stoker (18)
(Park Chan-wook, 2013, Us/UK) Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode. 99 mins
The Oldboy director gives us a sensual, tantalisingly ambiguous thriller, centred on Wasikowska and her shifty smalltown family.
Arbitrage (15)
(Nicholas Jarecki, 2012, Us) Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling.
- 3/2/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Pasolini's brilliant Passion play presents the Messiah as emerging from the landscape, and out of Marxist ideology
This brilliant and entirely unforgiving neorealist Passion play from 1964 – revived now as part of a retrospective for the director Pier Paolo Pasolini – looks as if it has been hacked from some stark rockface. It is made in black and white, and uses non-professionals, including the director's mother, Susanna Pasolini, as the older Mary, mother of Christ. The musical score switches sharply from Bach's St Matthew Passion to classic blues. Enrique Irazoqui's Jesus is eerily, almost disturbingly self-possessed, emerging from the landscape like Bergman's Death in The Seventh Seal. His rhetoric is ceaseless and fluent, and his sermonising is persistently presented as a kind of dreamlike montage of inspired insights and mysterious aperçus, with Pasolini's camera jump-cutting from Jesus's face at different places and times. This really is raw film-making, in a political...
This brilliant and entirely unforgiving neorealist Passion play from 1964 – revived now as part of a retrospective for the director Pier Paolo Pasolini – looks as if it has been hacked from some stark rockface. It is made in black and white, and uses non-professionals, including the director's mother, Susanna Pasolini, as the older Mary, mother of Christ. The musical score switches sharply from Bach's St Matthew Passion to classic blues. Enrique Irazoqui's Jesus is eerily, almost disturbingly self-possessed, emerging from the landscape like Bergman's Death in The Seventh Seal. His rhetoric is ceaseless and fluent, and his sermonising is persistently presented as a kind of dreamlike montage of inspired insights and mysterious aperçus, with Pasolini's camera jump-cutting from Jesus's face at different places and times. This really is raw film-making, in a political...
- 3/1/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
"In 1962 Pier Paolo Pasolini received a suspended sentence for his allegedly blasphemous contribution to the portmanteau film Rogopag, a brilliant sketch satirizing biblical movies," writes Philip French in his brief review of the new Masters of Cinema release of The Gospel According to St Matthew in today's Observer. "Two years later the gay, Marxist atheist showed the world how a life of Christ should be made, and it is a magnificent achievement, far superior to Scorsese's or Gibson's films."
David Jenkins in Little White Lies: "Essentially a 'straight' retelling of the life of Christ (who is played with fervent intensity by Enrique Irazoqui), which, on its surface, seldom editorializes or strays towards controversy, the film was fully embraced by the religious community to the extent that a colorized version was made to capitalize on the Bible belt buck. General familiarity of with the text makes this one of Pasolini's most easily approachable films,...
David Jenkins in Little White Lies: "Essentially a 'straight' retelling of the life of Christ (who is played with fervent intensity by Enrique Irazoqui), which, on its surface, seldom editorializes or strays towards controversy, the film was fully embraced by the religious community to the extent that a colorized version was made to capitalize on the Bible belt buck. General familiarity of with the text makes this one of Pasolini's most easily approachable films,...
- 4/8/2012
- MUBI
Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel
In 2009, producer-director Roger Corman was given an Honorary Academy Award. He'd been making movies since the mid-1950s, starting with titles such as Monster From The Ocean Floor right up to modern schlock like Sharktopus.
Obviously, the Oscar wasn't for these contributions to the art of cinema, rather for what Corman achieved away from the camera. Corman's studios provided a crash course in film-making for hundreds of young hopefuls. His films were made fast and cheap, and if he took you under his wing you wouldn't get rich but you'd soon know how to make a movie – one that played to the enthusiastic drive-in and grindhouse circuits. His companies were officially studios, unofficially they were film schools, and the list of graduates is stunning: Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Robert De Niro and hundreds of others.
In 2009, producer-director Roger Corman was given an Honorary Academy Award. He'd been making movies since the mid-1950s, starting with titles such as Monster From The Ocean Floor right up to modern schlock like Sharktopus.
Obviously, the Oscar wasn't for these contributions to the art of cinema, rather for what Corman achieved away from the camera. Corman's studios provided a crash course in film-making for hundreds of young hopefuls. His films were made fast and cheap, and if he took you under his wing you wouldn't get rich but you'd soon know how to make a movie – one that played to the enthusiastic drive-in and grindhouse circuits. His companies were officially studios, unofficially they were film schools, and the list of graduates is stunning: Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Robert De Niro and hundreds of others.
- 3/24/2012
- by Phelim O'Neill
- The Guardian - Film News
Mark Kermode chooses the most believable sons of God...
Lothaire Bluteau in Jesus of Montreal (1989)
It's perhaps ironic that the best telling of the Easter story is a solidly secular work, but Denys Arcand's modern parable about a troupe of actors attempting to breathe new life into the Gospels (and annoying the church in the process) is a genuine masterpiece. Bluteau is mesmerising as the performer who starts to take Christ's teachings to heart, thereby radicalising those around him and threatening the authorities. Arcand's intelligent script even contrives a real-life resurrection which offers eyesight to the blind and health to the sick. A real cinematic miracle.
Ted Neeley in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Hey kids! Jesus Rocks! Nowadays, this film of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical would doubtless be cast via a trashyTV show entitled How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Messiah? Back in 1973, however,...
Lothaire Bluteau in Jesus of Montreal (1989)
It's perhaps ironic that the best telling of the Easter story is a solidly secular work, but Denys Arcand's modern parable about a troupe of actors attempting to breathe new life into the Gospels (and annoying the church in the process) is a genuine masterpiece. Bluteau is mesmerising as the performer who starts to take Christ's teachings to heart, thereby radicalising those around him and threatening the authorities. Arcand's intelligent script even contrives a real-life resurrection which offers eyesight to the blind and health to the sick. A real cinematic miracle.
Ted Neeley in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Hey kids! Jesus Rocks! Nowadays, this film of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical would doubtless be cast via a trashyTV show entitled How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Messiah? Back in 1973, however,...
- 3/28/2010
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
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