“NO GOD BUT CINEMA”: BRUNO DUMONT’S HADEWIJCH

Abstract

This essay approaches the theme of crossings, frictions, and fusions in relation to Bruno Dumont's film Hadewijch (2009). While this film has been critiqued for sensationalizing religious divisions, and for catering to an Orientalist vision of Islam, this essay reads the film instead as an attempt to develop a post-theological understanding of spirituality, which would seek to transcend such divisions by locating a secular experience of the sacred within the cinematic encounter itself. It argues that Dumont's signature brand of irruptive and shocking violence is at the heart of this attempt to map out a secular cinematic conception of the sacred.

Keywords:

• Bruno Dumont
• Jean-Luc Nancy
• Post-Theological Turn
• Slow Cinema
• New Extremism in Cinema

Notes

1 This quote is Karen Badt's gloss on Dumont's assertion in an interview that: “There is no god. I AM an atheist […]. Cinema is my religion” (Badt).

2 For more detail, and a complete transcript of Nassir's sermon, see Karl Sarafidis's blog entry on Hadewijch on his wordpress site, Orientations.