Over the years, my friend Thomas Langkau has been an invaluable source of information to me, hunting out all kinds of obscure Jesus films and sending me the information. So it's him I have to thank for drawing my attention to the following films, all of which originate from non-western countries. The first (pictured) is the 1996 Philippine film Kristo. It starred Mat Ranillo III as Jesus and is based on John's Gospel. Ranillo has been starring in passion play / theatre versions of the story since 1977. It's well known enough to have its own pages on Wikipedia page and IMDB, although photos are rather scarce. You can however watch it all (unsubtitled) on YouTube.
However, this is not the first Philippine Jesus film. It appears that there was also one made in 1952 called Kalbaryo ni Hesus. There are quite a lot of press cuttings (including some photos) on this film at the Pelikula blog. According to IMDb, Jennings Sturgeon played Jesus.
Lastly there's A Ultima Semana (The Final Week), which is another Passion movie from Brazil. There's not much on this one aside from an IMDb page. It's not even entirely clear who played Jesus. More may come to light on this one however as IMDb claims it was released on video in 2007. There's no evidence of that at Amazon, but perhaps a copy will come to light at some point in the future.
The actor who played Jesus in A Ultima Semana (The Last Week) is Denis Derkian.
ReplyDeleteI've watched it a couple of times here in Brazil many years ago. It's a low budget production, but it's very good effort.
Some time ago you could buy it in VHS copies here in Brazil, but now it's currently unavaible.
Congratulations for your blog!
It looks like this is a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB1v3poyJ3c
ReplyDeleteAnd I've just come across another movie I don't think you've mentioned: El Hijo del Hombre, first shown in December 2009 or January 2010.
Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-n-ZBsJs4&feature=related
More info here: http://www.forumlibertas.com/frontend/forumlibertas/noticia.php?id_noticia=14762
and here: http://www.estepona.es/actualidad/web/amp_noticia.asp?s=2&id=6583
Thanks to you both for your contributions. Good to have the extra info.
ReplyDeleteMatt
Matt:
ReplyDeleteJust a little correction. The title of the film is Kristo.
I last saw it a year ago (when I went back to the Philippines during Holy Week), and the one element that stood out is how the production attempts to give the story of jesus a local, Philippine color. In fact, the caption at the beginning of the film makes the motive plain (translating freely into English):
"Suppose that the history of salvation is altered by God the Father...and the life and death of JESUS will occur not in Israel but in a group of islands in Southeast Asia, the home of the Brown Race, near Siam, Cambodia and Indonesia [i.e. the Philippines]...
...How will the appearance and culture of the Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible look like?"
I would try to watch it again and let you know of further thoughts.
Oops. Thanks Patrick, that's embarrassing. I'll go and change it now. My wife has been thinking about "the Christa" recently so I think that's where I made the slip.
ReplyDeleteMatt
Nope, that's okay.
ReplyDeleteI'll forever remember Kristo as the film which desensitized me from Passion violence: the scenes of Jesus' torture, while not too long drawn-out like Mel Gibson's, are surprisingly violent. Jesus is scourged, for example, while being hung upside-down and swung backwards and forwards!
By the way Mr. Matt, I don't know if you already are aware of this, but Roberto Rossellini's Il Messia is also now up on Youtube (unsubtitled, unfortunately): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyTwxrWglJc
ReplyDeleteHello. I realize this is an old blog but I just want to share that I'm about to work on subtitling that Kristo film. I'm a Filipino millenial and while I was laughing myself sick when it came out having seen other western Jesus films, I've since had an appreciation for what they were trying to achieve. A Jesus film, set in pre-Spanish Southeast Asian motif!
ReplyDeleteIt's a massive film and it'll probably take months to accomplish. But everyone knows the story and I assume you can follow along even without subs. It's said that Mel Gibson and the crew of Passion of the Christ at one point considered no subs just because the passion story was so well known. We're doing subs for the benefit of a wider audience, I guess.
Hi Bahawman,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments and apologies for such a slow reply - your comment got caught in my comment spam filter (or whatever the proper name for that is).
Thanks for letting me know about this. Please do let me know when it's done as I'd really like to raise awareness of this film. I would have included it in my book but couldn't find a way to get a decent quality version of it & then the lack of subtitles on top.
But please do keep me up to speed as I think once you're done lots of people would like to see it.
Matt