6533b7dafe1ef96bd126e445

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Film: audiowizualna relikwia?

subject

description

The Catholic Church, according to a centuries-old tradition, explained also in recent documents, venerates relics and images of saints. Nowadays, their images also appear in films, on cinema screens, television and on mobile devices. Although the Church’s documents are limited to material relics of saints, the question must be asked about the status of photographs, sound recordings, films, which are souvenirs of personal experiences and encounters: should they not be considered as a kind of relics? The photograph with the Pope - St. John Paul II - is after all for the people immortalized in it a testimony, a proof of an encounter, it brings back the memory of words heard then. If a film makes his viewers better, evokes a longing for God and holiness, does it not resemble a relic? If the cult of relics practiced in the Church gives the faithful the possibility of even physically „touching” saints, which the preserved remains evoke, then don’t films showing saints perform a similar function? After all, they make it possible to see, hear and return to the person of the saint. Numerous documentaries about John Paul II can be such audiovisual relics.