Cinema and Spirituality

Workshop by Maryam Palizban and Martin Treml

Workshop in Schloss Wiepersdorf

Organized by Maryam Palizban and Martin Treml

September 15–17, 2023.

In the opening credits of Le Mépris (1963), Jean-Luc Godard quotes the film sociologist and critic André Bazin, who says that cinema substitutes for our gaze a world that fits our desire. It is the desire not only for physical and emotional, but also for mental and spiritual fulfillment. Spirituality is not an offshoot of religion or a substitute for it, it is a fulfilled protest against the "fear of being cut off from reality; of not living, but of being suffocated and rewarded for agreeing with it" (Klaus Heinrich), which is always threatening in our administered societies.

The relationship between religion and spirituality, in its complexity, remains an arena of historical power games, between individuality and pluralism, between city and people. At their core, both are again intertwined in culture and freed from the power structure. Thus spirituality detaches itself from religion and transcends itself as its antagonist.

Cinema, on the other hand, has the power to enchant and disenchant at the same time; it is a chamber of wonders and a technical apparatus. It teaches us to see, but also to put things and relationships together differently than they usually are. It is a place of regression and enlightenment, and until recently it was the last attempt to bring everything together at once, to represent and reflect. Today, reality is fragmented and privatized, but there are still the films that show and tell of something different.

Such film examples were viewed and discussed together at this workshop in Wiepersdorf. The films came from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Iran.