Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Road-movie tour of the deep South
If David Lynch made a road documentary about the rural communities of the American South, it might look a great deal like Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus, Andrew Douglas' meditation on the nexus of music, poverty, and faith. Told with a minimum of dialogue, Douglas' documentary quietly unearths rough-hewn spirits of all kinds: in the rootsy folk/blues of its blisteringly talented musicians, in the alcohol of blue-collar bars that pepper the highways, and in the fire and brimstone of the region's home-grown religious faith, Pentecostal Christianity. Douglas sets his sights on the beautiful but harsh landscape, from the bayou country of Louisiana to the rocky foothills of Tennessee to the foreboding forests of Virginia. The entrancing cinematography is accompanied by what is, hands down, the best film score of 2004. Sitting next to the everyday people that Douglas often captures in their vulnerable moments are master roots musicians, including Johnny Dowd, The Handsome Family, 16 Horsepower, and Lee Sexton.
Harsh lives require harsh religions, and the explorations of Pentecostal faith are both eloquent and disturbing. Douglas, a British director of commercials working under the auspices of BBC Arena, naturally brings a cultural distance to an examination of The South that refines the film's wavering focus. The pervasiveness of religiosity is hammered home time and time again; under Douglas' watchful camera, even those hearty souls who reject the church and its teachings are unable to escape its reach. The fact that many of the participants in the film consider drinking a beer at a local tavern to be a virulent sin may stun more urbane viewers. As the inheritors of generations of poverty, religion has become the promise of more than an afterlife...it is the promise of a better existence. If these people speak in tongues, Douglas argues, who are we to say that God has not found them? (G. Shanks, Mixed Reviews)
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Thu April 7, 2005, 7:00 & 9:00, Muenzinger Auditorium
UK/USA, 2003, in English, Color, 86 min, Unrated
Tickets
10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission.
$7 w/UCB student ID,
$7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.
Parking
Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the
Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters
along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.
RTD Bus
Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus
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First Person Cinema
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(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil
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Celebrating Stan
Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.
C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts
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