The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology

media release: Mills Folly Microcinema presents The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology by Jim Finn on Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. Admission $5.00, free for ALL members. A $1 fee will be added for single admission credit card charges, but no fee for multiple admissions ($10 or more). Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology | Jim Finn | USA | 2023 | 64 minutes

A psychedelic portrait of the anticolonial Jewish mystic and founding theorist of Christianity—Paul the Apostle. 

The founding theorist of Christianity — Paul of Tarsus — met resurrected Jesus outside Damascus and spent the rest of his life expanding an obscure messianic sect of Judaism to the pagan communities of the eastern Mediterranean. Piecing together propaganda films, VHS tapes, audio cassettes,  board games and other detritus from church rummage sales, writer/director Jim Finn is the guide through Paul's life, ideology and influence with the help of animation, video synthesizers and reenactments.

References to Paul’s letters regularly appear with numbers and colons in the bios of professional baseball players and Republican staffers. And each year new books and articles are written about Paul as theologian, worker, feminist & queer ally, Jewish mystic, missionary and rhetorician. But still many of the basic ideas of who he was and what he believed still escape us. 

This story is told by creating portraits from his life, obsessions and legends based on the ancient Greek words in his letters: Apocalypsis (unmasking, unveiling, revelation), Charismata (divinely conferred gifts), Porneia (illicit sexual activity weirdly translated as fornication), Ethnos (pagan gentiles), Ekklesia (democratic assembly of believers), Koinonia (fellowship), Stenazo (the groaning pain of laboring through childbirth), Pistis (faithfulness or loyalty) and Parousia (presence of God, the arrival of the Kingdom of God on Earth). 

Composer Colleen Burke brought together musicians like Jim White (The Dirty Three) and Munaf Rayani (Explosions in the Sky) for this soundtrack based on 1970s Catholic liturgical music and Nordic metal. The gentle Paul themes with flute, acoustic guitar and mellotron contrasts with the Demonic Roman Empire themes of electric guitar, drums and synth.

Jim Finn’s movies have been called ‘Utopian comedies’ and ‘trompe l’oeil films’. His Communist Trilogy is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. “Steeped in the obsolete language of revolutionary art," The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Finn’s meticulous, deadpan mockumentaries often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe." His work has screened at international, avant-garde and underground film festivals like Rotterdam, Validivia, BAFICI, Edinburgh and the New York Film Festival as well as museums, universities, cinematheques and microcinemas. He was born in St. Louis in 1968 to a family of Midwestern Catholic salespeople.

Mills Folly Microcinema showcases nationally recognized experimental film and video art work from the festival and microcinema circuit. We network with regional filmmakers and organizations to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at Project Projection events.