Arts Journal & Online Film Community Present Top 100 Film List

Seattle: March 01, 2010, (PCTV Newsdesk)

On the eve of the Oscar awards ceremony, Image, a journal of literature and the arts, has released its 2010 Arts & Faith Top 100 Films list. Showcasing top films and from around the world and spanning cinematic history from 1927 to films currently in theaters (the Coens' Oscar- nominated A Serious Man), the list culminates years of discussion and debate among the ArtsandFaith.com online community.

In his blog post accompanying the Arts & Faith Top 100 Films list, film critic Jeffrey Overstreet (Through a Screen Darkly) defines the list as "characterized both by artistic excellence and a serious wrestling with questions that...might be called religious or spiritual."

Overstreet notes that this list will come as a surprise to those who think they know what a religious community might select. Films like The Ten Commandments and The Passion of the Christ did not even make the list.

"Many Christians," Overstreet explains, "have become so concerned about the usefulness of art as a tool of ministry and evangelism, they've forgotten--or never known in the first place--what art really is, and how it works."

Last published in 2006, previous incarnations of the Arts & Faith Top 100 List have been featured by the LA Times, VH1, Christianity Today, and on Jeffrey Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere blog. The list has been called, "an incomparable resource for anyone interested in exploring transcendent themes in the movies."

Arts & Faith is a flourishing online community, steadily evolving over a decade and includes amateur and professional film critics, in addition to academics, clergy, authors, artists, and actors.

Members include Jeffrey Overstreet, Peter T. Chattaway (author of an award-winning film column for BC Christian News), Steven D. Greydanus (National Catholic Register), Michael Leary (Religious Studies, Fontbonne University) and Ron Reed (actor, playwright, founder of Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, Canada).

"This is...an invitation to a feast," Overstreet notes. The films "are full of beauty and mystery...[and] tease the mind into thought and reflection--again and again and again."

Image became the host of the Arts & Faith community in Spring 2009.

For 20 years Image has been one of America's leading literary quarterlies. Award-winning material from Image regularly appears in "Year's Best" anthologies, and is reprinted in books, websites and magazines such as Harper's. Writers published in Image include Elie Wiesel, John Updike, Mark Helprin, Wim Wenders and Garrison Keillor, among others.