If cinema is understood to include all human-made moving-image forms viewed on a type of screen, it is the primary means of mediated human communication in our contemporary age. Theology, then, must be conveyed and understood not merely through words but through motion pictures.
Theocinematics: Film as Theology demonstrates how film can speak of God in the language of moving images. Theologian and film critic Joel Mayward proposes that movies are capable of providing theological insights via the audiovisual form. The book offers the contemporary church a fresh method of theological reflection by drawing on resources from film theory and criticism. Rather than a propositional and systematic approach, theocinematics is an affective and imaginative mode of expressing and encountering the divine. Each chapter unpacks the theological affordances of individual film aesthetics--cinematography, editing, production design, sound, acting, direction, and genre--before offering close analysis of one classic twentieth-century and one contemporary twenty-first-century film as case studies.
As a work of theological film criticism, Theocinematics advances an innovative method for considering movies as, simultaneously, theological reflection and divine revelation: that is, exploring how films may speak of God and how God may speak through films. Ultimately, this is not film and theology but film as theology--instead of merely viewing cinema theologically, we may also view theology cinematically.
