Thursday, April 01, 2004

Three other Jesus films

The beliefnet article previously noted mentions some films which may be of interest. One already completed and shown in selected cinemas in the UK is Man Dancin', directed by Norman Stone. This appears to be in the tradition of Jesus of Montreal and the like -- the modern day Passion play is re-staged (this time in Glasgow) and the hero's destiny begins to mirror Jesus's. There is an official web site here and a pretty lengthy, seven to eight minute trailer:

Man Dancin'

See also the IMDb entry.

The next mentioned is Regardt van den Bergh's The Lamb. The most informative piece I can find on this is in Variety from September 2003:

$20M leap of faith
Christelle De Jager
"The Lamb," a $20 million biblical epic, is scheduled to start shooting in South Africa in December, exec produced by former Paramount Pictures president Frank Yablans and directed by Regardt van den Bergh ("The Messiah," "The Nativity").

"The Lamb" portrays a journey of faith by Mattias and his son Joel, intertwined with encounters with Jesus. It will be shot in Israel, Tunisia and South Africa and will be one of the biggest projects to come out of South Africa.
You may recognise the director's name from the Visual Bible's 1996 outing, Matthew.

And speaking of the Visual Bible, producers also of the recent Gospel of John, the next project is the Gospel of Mark. There is not a lot available on this film at the moment. Reports usually simply say "in development". The beliefnet article says that it will start filming in "a couple of months". So keep watching this space.

No comments: