A screening of Pasquale Scimeca’s film La passione di Goisué l’ebreo (The Passion of Joshua the Jew) as part of the Ecce Homo: The face of Jesus in the history of cinema festival

On Monday, the 26th of April 2010, the latest event in the Ecce Homo film festival will be a screening of Pasquale Scimeca’s film La passione di Goisué l’ebreo (The Passion of Joshua the Jew).

This film by Pasquale Scimeca is an interesting deconstruction/transposition of the Passion. The crude production, as critics have highlighted, contrasts with the course violence of Mel Gibson and preserves a style reminiscent of the evangelism of Pope John XXIII. It is a Good Friday Passion play, a people’s theatrical representation: a play within a play. The Passion of Joshua the Jew is a “pictorial” and austere film that confuses the mind and makes deception credible – there is no danger of exaggerating when one cites Brechtian influences and alienation – and reaches a more instinctive physicality and an almost hypnotic flow of collective hysteria. Introduced by Hamilton Santhià.

The film is part of the ECCE HOMO: The face of Jesus in the history of cinema film festival, organised in conjunction with a large exhibition of the same name now on display at the National Museum of Cinema until 6 June 2010. The festival has been organised by Bibliomediateca, the director is Silvio Alovisio (University of Turin) and it is run by the university film society Sperduti nel buio.