Dr Sheila J. Nayar 
The Sacred and the Cinema [PDF ebook] 
Reconfiguring the ‘Genuinely’ Religious Film

For more than half a century now, scholars have debated over what comprises a ”genuinely” religious film-one that evinces an ”authentic” manifestation of the sacred. Often these scholars do so by pitting the ”successful” films against those which propagate an inauthentic spiritual experience-with the biblical spectacular serving as their most notorious candidate. This book argues that what makes a filmic manifestation of the sacred true or authentic may say more about a spectator or critic”s particular way of knowing, as influenced by alphabetic literacy, than it does about the aesthetic or philosophical-and sometimes even faith-based-dimensions of the sacred onscreen. Engaging with everything from Hollywood religious spectaculars, Hindu mythologicals, and an international array of films revered for their ”transcendental style, ”
The Sacred and the Cinema unveils the epistemic pressures at the heart of engaging with the sacred onscreen. The book also provides a valuable summation of the history of the sacred as a field of study, particularly as that field intersects with film.