With the presence of the director and the selector Cecilia Ermini
A very serious mockumentary that explores our history and culture through the life of the founding theorist and proselytizer of Christianity, i.e., Paul, the Damascus guy, to put it simply. It is precisely from the blinding vision on the road to the present-day Syrian city that the collage-film’s title, The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology, takes inspiration, as the protagonist himself defined the event an apocalypsis, literally an un-covering. Ultimately, it is the same thing that the filmmaker Jim Finn does, dis-covering not only Paul’s long travel bound for his beheading, his preaching, and miraculous actions, but also the highbrow and lowbrow materials that make up this narrative, including ancient frescoes and historical mosaics, 16mm films, cassette propaganda, board games, animation, re-enactments, doom metal, covers of liturgical music, found footage, and original music.
Jim Finn’s movies have been called ‘Utopian comedies’ and ‘trompe-l’oeil films.’ Finn was born in St. Louis in 1968 and teaches film at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His films have screened at international, avant-garde, and underground film festivals like Rotterdam, Valdivia, BAFICI, Edinburgh and the New York Film Festival as well as museums, universities, cinematheques and microcinemas, including the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
script Jim Finn
soundtrack Colleen Burke, Jim White, Munaf Rayani
animation Matt Loudon
sound design Alexander Panos, Jesse Stiles
cast Linda Montano, Usama Alshaibi, Begum Malcoclar, Jim Finn
ALL SCREENINGS ARE FREE
