A Study of the Yori Lotman's Semiosphere Cultural Theory and Its Application in the Field of Analysis of Relations between Religion and Cinema

Yuri Lotman, the founder of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School, through introducing a cultural theory around the concept of semiosphere tries to describe and explain the mechanism of culture’s semiotic function in a semiospheric position. Cultural semiotics, which is the theory and methodology of this school, was formed to study the interaction, correlation or separation and contradiction between semiotic systems. According to Lotman, semiosphere is not only the sum total of semiotic systems, but also it is the necessary condition for the occurrence of any kind of connection and existence of any kind of language and text. The presupposition of this article is the interaction between religion and cinema, as two semiotic systems, in the form of representation of religion in cinema. However, the problem is the way of this representation by applying Lotman’s semiological method. The interaction between select semiospheres is analyzed by studying the Every Night Loneliness, directed by Rasul Sadrameli, 2007, selected from amongst movies attributed to religious cinema, as a case study.