Backdrop image for movie Apparition of the Eternal Church

Apparition of the Eternal Church (2006)

The movie captures the responses of 31 authors, musicians, filmmakers and dancers to Olivier Messiaen's monumental organ work "Apparition of the Eternal Church." Listening to the 10-minute piece through headphones, the documentary subjects-most of whom are outsiders to the church and do not know what they're hearing-put Messiaen's project to the test: Is it possible to portray, through time-bound, invisible sound, the spiritual, the architectural, the eternal? The result is a collective interpretation improvising its way through an aesthetic landscape defined by violent contradictions. Resolution abuts eternity, eroticism asceticism, spiritual ecstasy physical torture. Together, the music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called the marriage of heaven and hell.

  • Documentary

Top billed cast

  • Photo of John Cameron MitchellJohn Cameron MitchellSelf
  • Photo of Jackie BeatJackie BeatSelf
  • Photo of Justin Vivian BondJustin Vivian BondSelf
  • Photo of Ana MatronicAna MatronicSelf
  • Photo of Daniel HandlerDaniel HandlerSelf

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