Newsbites: Turkish Moses! Sign-language Jesus! Freud & Moses! Malick! Scorsese! Clarence!
Newsbites: Turkish Moses! Sign-language Jesus! Freud & Moses! Malick! Scorsese! Clarence!
World premieres, a Netflix release, new making-of clips, and more.
Just a few quick items here about new, recent, and in-development Bible projects.
Netflix to release Turkish docudrama about Moses
What’s on Netflix reports that Netflix will release a Turkish docudrama about Moses, called Testament: The Story of Moses, on March 27:
The show is being produced by Karga7 Productions, who have offices in both Istanbul and Los Angeles and have worked with Netflix before. Their previous projects for Netflix include Rise of Empires: Ottoman, which ran for two seasons, and they’re also behind Midnight at the Pera Palace. Elsewhere, the production company is behind Yeni Hayat and Hekimoglu.
There are very few details about the series so far, but consider me intrigued. Among other things, I wonder if this series will adopt a secular or religious perspective on the story of the Exodus—and if the latter, which religion?
Turkey is a majority-Muslim country, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the series reflected a Muslim perspective on the story of Moses, similar to the Iranian films about Abraham, Joseph, Solomon, Mary, and Jesus that I’ve written about in recent years.
Then again, Karga7 produced a series called Jesus Conspiracies about a decade ago, and a look at the trailer suggests it was a fairly standard, sensationalized, and basically secular take on the “historical Jesus”, like a lot of other shows we’ve seen.
In any case, I’m always happy to see adaptations of the Bible from a non-Western, non-European perspective. So, on the off chance that that’s what this is, I’ll be keeping an eye out for this series when it comes out next month.
New Jesus movie told in sign language set to premiere in Texas
Deaf Missions is releasing a movie about Jesus this year in which all of the dialogue is delivered through American Sign Language.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film based on a story about non-deaf people in which all of the dialogue was communicated through sign language, but Deaf Missions has made a few of these films now, including an adaptation of The Book of Job in 2018 and a short film about the woman caught in adultery, called Uncondemned, in 2021.
You can watch both of those films in the Deaf Missions app. Uncondemned is also available on the Deaf Missions YouTube channel:
With regard to the upcoming feature-length Jesus film, I cannot help but wonder about the story selection and the logistics of the storytelling, there.
E.g., I can’t help wondering if the filmmakers did anything—and if so, what—with passages like the ones in which voices speak from heaven (Mark 1:11, 9:7; Matthew 3:17, 17:5; Luke 3:22, 9:35; John 12:28), people comment on Peter’s accent (Matthew 26:73), or Jesus heals the deaf (Mark 7:31-37, Matthew 11:5, Luke 7:22).
And will Jesus get to say anything while he’s on the cross? Every gospel quotes him saying something after he was crucified, and it would be strange to see a film in which he said nothing while he was up there. A part of me wonders what it would be like to see a mob “shout” for his crucifixion with nothing but hand gestures, too.
Anyway. The film is scheduled to premiere in Fort Worth, Texas on April 4, as part of the Deaf Missions Conference that is taking place in nearby Arlington.
You can watch a trailer for the film on its Instagram page.
Finnish movie explores Freud’s obsession with Moses
Forget Freud and C.S. Lewis. How about Freud and Moses?
While looking around for information on the Netflix Moses series, I discovered that a movie about founding-father-of-psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and his obsession with Moses premiered at the Rotterdam film festival a few weeks ago.
The film is called simply Moses, and it was directed by the Finnish artist couple Jenni & Lauri Luhta, who also star in the film; she plays Freud, he plays Moses.
This is the synopsis from the Luhtas’ website:
Moses depicts Sigmund Freud (Jenni Luhta), the founder of psychoanalysis, during his final years, when he was obsessed with Moses (Lauri Luhta), the founder of Judaism and the founding of monotheistic religion. Entombed in a dark place, surrounded by the threat of antisemitism and war, the elderly Freud, ever the heroic atheist, attempts as his final deed to come to terms with the central figure of Judaism. What Freud says of “the man Moses”, and how he says it, reveals much about the man Freud. But did Moses escape him in the end?
The Rotterdam festival website has a blurb describing the film (in Dutch) and a trailer and a video interview with the filmmakers (both in English).
The Way of the Wind takes a little more time
Remember The Way of the Wind? Terrence Malick shot his Jesus movie in 2019 and has been editing it ever since.
Jordan Ruimy at the World of Reel blog said last summer he was hearing rumours that the film might be finished sometime this year, and now, in a blog post this week, he says things are looking kind of promising on that front: “the final stages of mixing” on the film are apparently set to occur in August.
But that means the film won’t be ready in time for the Cannes film festival in May, as Ruimy had once hoped it would be. So now, he says, “The next best case scenario is a Venice premiere,” which would be in late August or early September.
Martin Scorsese gives another update on his Jesus movie
Deadline says Martin Scorsese told reporters at a Berlinale press conference this week he’s still figuring out how to do that new Jesus movie he’s been talking about:
“I’m contemplating it right now. What kind of film I’m not quite sure, but I want to make something unique and different that could be thought-provoking and I hope also entertaining. I’m not quite sure yet how to go about it,” he said. . . .
A recent L.A. Times article suggested that he had completed a screenplay adapted from the book A Life Of Jesus by Shūsaku Endō, who was also the author of historical missionary tale Silence which Scorsese brought to the big screen in 2016.
But his comments in Berlin suggest the project is still at a very early stage of development.
He told the press conference that he hoped to resume work on the project once the promotions and awards tour for Killers Of The Flower Moon was completed.
“Maybe I’ll get some sleep and then wake up and I’ll have this fresh idea of how to do it,” he said.
For what it’s worth, last month—a couple weeks after that L.A. Times article—Scorsese said he might start shooting the film in April, “to get it going.” We shall see.
The Book of Clarence gets new making-of clips and a new interview
The Book of Clarence has been available online for a few weeks now, and the studio behind the film has released a couple new clips from the bonus features that come with the film on certain digital platforms. At least one new interview with one of the film’s crew members has popped up in the last few days, too.
The interview, with make-up artist Matiki Anoff, comes courtesy of BET.com:
BET.com: The film also maintained the integrity of the lifestyle during those times in history. Take us into the research that was necessary to achieve this standard.
Matiki Anoff: As I read the script, I thought, 'Who are these people? What tribes would have migrated to this part of the world? Did they come as a slave? Did they come as a tradesman?' All these factors were coming in.
I immediately met with Laura [Borzelli] –the crowd supervisor– and we just sat down and said, 'Okay, so this group of people would have come from this region. So let's look at the specifications. Let's look at the facial structures, let's think of what type of beards they would have had in that day.'
If they were travelers, they would be dusty. So, let's have dust on their feet [and] on their hands. If they were impoverished, let's have a lacquer. For men, we had to plug up all the piercings because that wasn't relevant at that time. With the women, they weren't heavily made up at that time, but we researched henna and henna paintings from that era [and used] kohl on the eyes [because] they beautified themselves. Even in that era, [they did so] with clay masks. So it's those little things that take you out of the period.
Meanwhile, Coming Soon has a clip from the bonus features in which director Jeymes Samuel and lead actor LaKeith Stanfield talk about the music on the film’s set.
And Comic Book Movie has a clip on the making of the film’s “light bulb moment”:
I previously rounded up a bunch of interviews with the filmmakers here.
Oh, and that reminds me: in that earlier post, I wrote that the film’s UK release—which was going to be in January—was seemingly canceled at the last minute. The film is now going to come out in the UK and Ireland on April 19.
Previous videos for The Book of Clarence:
The teaser trailer (August 29, 2023)
The BFI London Film Festival world premiere interviews (October 13, 2023)
The official trailer, the ‘Behind the Scenes’ featurette, and the ‘Hallelujah Heaven’ lyric video (November 28, 2023)
The ‘Hallelujah Heaven’ music video and the ‘Defy’ TV spot (December 22, 2023)
The ten-minute ‘Extended Preview’ clip (February 7, 2024)