In Apparition of the Eternal Church, 31 people listen to a ten-minute piece of music through headphones and describe what they hear. What all but a few don't know is that the music is Olivier Messiaen's monumental organ work "Apparition of the Eternal Church", which the composer wrote in 1931 when he was 24 years old. A deeply religious man and the organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris, Messiaen wrote a piece that sends some listeners to the heights of spiritual ecstasy. For others, the encounter with Messiaen is like ten minutes in Dante's inferno. The experiment, then, is to have 31 people put the violent contradictions of Messiaen's music into words. Together, the music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called the marriage of heaven and hell.
Described as "mesmerizing" by New York critic Alex Ross, the film was named the Best North American Independent Feature Film by the Indianapolis International Film Festival, received the Gold Medal for Excellence at the Park City Film Music Festival, and received the Special Director's Prize at the Santa Cruz Film Festival.
"May be the best description of the Messiaen effect on record...circles around the mystery of music and subjectivity and touches down on a head-spinning array of topics...a bravura performance, not to be missed." - The Village Voice
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