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MOCRA debuts new Celluloid Bible exhibit

Last Sunday marked the opening of the newest exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art. The Celluloid Bible: Marketing Films Inspired by Scripture is a collection of more than 50 vintage movie posters from movies inspired by Jewish scripture, the New Testament and early Christianity.

The posters date all the way back to 1898 and include everything from a movie poster for The Passion Play of Ober-Ammergau, to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ from 2004.

In addition to the 50 large posters, there are also numerous smaller poster cards and publicity materials from the movies represented in the posters. One of the most interesting pieces in the exhibit is the “Tissot Bible.”

The “Tissot Bible” is a version of the Bible that was illustrated by (and named for) French artist James Tissot. Tissot created his illustrations based on the visions of Blessed Anna Catherine Emmerich. Emmerich’s visions described in detail various scenes from the New Testament, and it is from Tissot’s illustrations of these visions that many of the movies represented in the exhibit based their costume and set design.

The various items are part of the collection of the Rev. Michael Morris, a professor of religion and the arts at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. It was last year at the Graduate Theological Union that MOCRA director Terrence Dempsey, S.J., saw the collection exhibited.

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“I thought that it might be interesting to bring an expanded version of the exhibition to St. Louis,” Dempsey said.

In a presentation given before Sunday’s opening, Morris described the exhibit as an intersection between religion and cinema, which was part of its appeal to Dempsey.

“The Bible has been fertile territory for movies since the beginning, and many people get their understanding of the Bible from these films, for better or for worse,” Dempsey said.

The collection of posters does indeed demonstrate this. The posters not only show how different movies represent the same story, but also show how various countries portray the same movie in order to make it more marketable to each particular country.

Aside from having just poster stills, the exhibit also has a television monitor playing trailers for numerous religious-themed movies, as well as a two-hour documentary to show how Hollywood represents biblical stories, helping to set this exhibit apart from other exhibits that have come to MOCRA.

“Even though we had the Silver Clouds by pop artist Andy Warhol just last year, we’ve never had an exhibition about popular culture before. We have never focused on the motion picture industry,” said Dempsey.

Despite the marketing techniques that inevitably come into play when creating a poster to promote a movie, the collection retains an aesthetically pleasing and artistic quality to it.

Some of the posters whose artistry stands out include those from Golgata, the Czech version of The Gospel According to St. Matthew (whose image is based on a painting by Salvador Dal?) and the poster from Il Messia.

In addition to the exhibit, which runs through Dec. 9, MOCRA will also be hosting viewings of two of the movies represented in the exhibit. The first is Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, which will be showing at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday, Oct.7 at the Tivoli Theater.

The second movie that will be featured is William Wyler’s Ben-Hur, which will be playing at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 4, at the Tivoli Theater.

Admission to both films is free to SLU students with your SLU ID. Admission is free to the general public as well, but donations are welcome, with a suggested donation of $5 for adults and $1 for students and children. MOCRA is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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