Page - 106 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

issue of cinema as a space that integrates and represents many spaces has been at the core of film theory (and equally phenomenology) since the time of An- dré Bazin. More contemporary scholarly research that is helpful in particular in showing how cinema functions as a space which integrates geographical and physical spaces (an idea I develop in this text) includes the more theoretical work of Jeff Hopkins on the “geography of film” and the more empirical ap- proach of Brian Jacobson on how architecture and cities are represented by and in relation to cinema.1 Kathrin Fahlenbrach has developed a theory of cinematic space or “film space” as an embodied space which is related to pre-metaphor- ical structures in the human cognitive system, enabling that space to concre- tize and comprehend complex meanings and particularly the representations of bodily and emotional experiences. While Fahlenbrach’s discussion is useful in elucidating the ways in which viewers relate off-screen to the space represented on-screen, I employ the term “embodied space” solely to refer to the on-screen psychospiritual space of the characters and the ways in which they inhabit that inner space. The uniqueness of my approach comes from my connecting and questioning the ways in which three types of space are constituted within the cinematic to frame meaning.2 For my examination of cinematic representations of the secular and sacred spheres in Israel and for questions of religion and film more widely, I take inspiration from the theoretical work of S. Brent Plate which considers the function of cinematic space as a “sacred space”.3 “Geographical space” in the context of this work refers solely to the site of Israel as a land of many communities, in which the individual’s struggle is the centre of the drama and the storyline. “Physical space” refers to the interior and exterior environments which the characters inhabit in the films. “Embod- ied space” refers to the locale inhabited by the psychospiritual “inner life” of the characters. This inner life is often manifested externally through physical space, breaking the borders of conventional temporality.4 All spaces have bor- ders, which are often invisible. Cinematic space depicts and expresses those borders through elements of film language, in the case of this article though mise-en-scène, montage and the disruption of temporal reality. By (re)framing meanings cinema questions existing socio-political realities and their impact on the individual or on whole communities. The microcosmic realities which 1 See Jacobson 2005; Hopkins 1994, 47–65. For further reading on the “geography of film” see Aitken/ Zonn 1994. On the wider relationship between cinema and space see Jameson 1995. 2 See Fahlenbrach 2009, 105–121. For the conceptualization of embodied space in cinema see also Sobchack 2004, and on questions of aesthetic experience more widely see Marković 2012, 1–17. 3 See Plate 2017. 4 Cinema can disrupt conventional conceptions of temporal reality as linear by seamlessly integrating realities existing on two temporal planes: the border between life and death, for instance, is broken in Geula (Joseph Madmony / Boaz Yehonatan Yacov, IL 2018), as I will discuss later in this article. 106 | Milja Radovic www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1