The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Jim Finn
Though consumed with antisemitism and fascism, historically the Apostle Paul was a revolutionary. A psychedelic montage, a wild ride through 2000 years of rabid propaganda.
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Jim Finn
Camera Lucida
Documentary Film
USA
2023
64 minutes
English
German premiere
Synopsis
A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity. The story of Paul the Apostle’s life, ideology and influence is told by piecing together 20th Century 16mm and cassette propaganda, board games, animation, reenactments, Roman Empire doom metal and covers of Catholic liturgical music. The gentle Paul themes with flute, acoustic guitar and mellotron contrast with the Demonic Roman Empire themes of electric guitar, drums and synth. Performance artist Linda Montano and filmmaker Usama Alshaibi portray Paul on his journeys. The film tries to capture the disturbing reaction Paul and his letters had in the early days of Christianity. The use of live-action, animation, found footage and original music was a way to recover his biography from the brains of 20th Century humans so that in some perhaps misguided Utopian impulse, we can build something new out of it for the future.
The sun shines every day in Chagrin Valley, USA. Frozen in a 1950s-inspired artificial decor, this assisted living facility for people who suffer from dementia is home to fragile and ageing residents. Here, everyday life drags on slowly. Florence and her companions dream of an elusive elsewhere during their days punctuated by confusion, fleeting conflicts and overdue family visits. The caregivers – as kind as they are exhausted – run the show in this pastel-coloured, sanitised social theatre. Between two shifts, they confess their desire for a better future; one that is not so different from that of the residents, after all.
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The son of Brooklyn's most admired Rabbi reveals the truth about the extreme and isolated cult his father established and the atrocities in it, that continue to this day.
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Built in the 19th century, this Tamil Hindu temple in Thanlyin, across the Bago River from Yangon, is unique in the largely Buddhist Myanmar: this is a place where people from different religious backgrounds come to pray in the hope that their wishes will be fulfilled. Fortune-teller “Yellow Mother” is one of four inhabitants of Pilikan village who – in between lively spectacles of leaping cows and cow-catching – explain what the temple and its rituals mean to them.
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DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.