The Jesus Film (1979)

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God raised by a Jewish carpenter. Based on the gospel of Luke in the New Testament. Here is the life of Jesus from the miraculous virgin birth to the calling of his disciples, hilarity ensuing, public miracles and ministry, ending with his death by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman empire and resurrection on the third day.

Trivia: In the scene where Jesus healed the Gerasene demoniac by casting the demon into the pigs, the only way the crew could get the pigs to act crazed was to light firecrackers and frighten them. However, this is one of the few scenes which is not accurate to St. Luke's Gospel. In Luke, they ran off a cliff. The man playing the corpse of Jesus later became a seminarian because of the film.

According to The JESUS Film Project, The Jesus Film is the Most Widely-Distributed/Translated Film in History — Originally distributed in 1979 by Warner Brothers in theaters nationwide, the two-hour "JESUS" film is not only the most widely-distributed, but also the most translated film in history---with more than 950 separate language translations and more than 6 billion exposures globally, topping Oscar greats Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music, The Lion King, Titanic, and The Wizard of Oz.

The JESUS Film Project has a very unconventional film distribution, they take the film and penetrate the most remote, dangerous places on earth through a massive logistical operation involving hundreds of staff and volunteers who tote generators, makeshift screens, and portable projectors to film showings, often to people who have never heard of Jesus and some who have never seen a film or TV.

I saw an Easter special about religion portrayed on film and they talked about this movie being seen by more people around the world then any other film ever. Well, I am a film buff. What kind of buff would I be if I had not seen the most watched film ever? It was very interesting to see what that world was like. The film makers spent five years researching the time period to represent it as accurately as possible and Jesus's dialog is taken strait out of Luke. But I think the most amazing thing about this movie is the whole JESUS Film Project thing. These volunteers take the film and a screen and a generator and speakers and travel into remote areas of the world to show this film. When they translate the movie in to a new language they take some pretty extreme measures. They have native speakers come in and translate the script, then they rewrite it as close as the can to the same number of syllables used in the film (without changing the message) so that the lips match the speech. Then when they are ready to record it, they use native speakers. Many of the people watching it have never heard outsides speak their language without accents. Now that is what I call dedication.