Rome International Film Festival 2008

Paul Festa's award-winning and critically acclaimed first film Apparition of the Eternal Church captures a spectacular confrontation between thirty-one mostly nonreligious artists and the music of French Catholic composer Olivier Messiaen. Faced with the challenge of putting Messiaen's apocalyptic music into words, listeners including literary critic Harold Bloom, filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell, actor and Pulitzer-nominated playwright Eisa Davis, Tony-nominated drag star Justin Bond ("Kiki & Herb"), Scissor Sisters singer Ana Matronic and the late harpsichord virtuoso Albert Fuller tell a story that ranges from scenes of torture and hellfire to sex and spiritual ecstasy.