Dear Shaded Viewers,
JESUS CHRIST! AT THE MOVIES is coming to Anthology Film Archives in NYC! Curated by filmmaker Jim Finn, who will be premiering his new feature THE APOCALYPTIC IS THE MOTHER OF ALL CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, the series will include Glenn Belverio’s 29-minute video DRAG QUEENS FOR JESUS, a 1992 episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, starring Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm, two drag queens who leave the secular humanist activist movement after becoming obsessed with 700 Club televangelist Sheila Walsh.
It will be screened with HELL-BOUND TRAIN. This 50-minute silent film from 1930 is the work of self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, Black evangelists who employed cinema as a tool for their traveling ministry. Their surreal visual allegories were screened in churches and meeting halls, accompanied by a sermon and the passing of a collection plate.
The program will be screened on Wednesday, December 13 at 9:15pm and I’ll be there to introduce my video and again on Tuesday, December 19 at 6:45pm where I’ll do both an intro and a post-screening Q&A—so please bring your holy and blasphemous questions! Or if you just want to raise your hand and start speaking in tongues, that would be cool too.
Tickets for Dec 19 can be purchased here.
In Jim’s words, JESUS CHRIST! AT THE MOVIES “asks how has Christianity functioned down in the dirty politics of humanity? How has the character, the influence, the God-ness of Jesus manifested itself in the movies – even when JC himself is off screen?” The series will be a mix of features and avant-garde shorts, including THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, Buñuel’s THE MILKY WAY, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, Jarman’s THE GARDEN, and work by the Kuchars, Jeanne Liotta, Rolf Forsberg, and others.”
