AMERICAN JESUS is now available on Hulu as well as Hulu Plus! And through the magic of embedded videos, it’s also available right here.
AMERICAN JESUS is an exploration of Christianity in every faction of American Life, from the bread line to the yoga studio. Christian cowboys, bikers and musicians, comedians, surfers and cage-fighters, they are all doing it for Christ. Directed by Aram Garriga.
“American Jesus is an important documentary that will redefine
how the world looks at America and how we Americans look at ourselves…
with a level of intuitive intelligence I’ve never seen before in a film on religion.”
–The Huffington Post
“AN AMAZING FILM….
one of the best and most interesting documentaries on religion.”
–Todd Brown, Twitch
“Fascinating and informative…
one of the best, if not, the best documentary on Christianity in the United States today,
lift your arms in prayer and say “Hallelujah” for AMERICAN JESUS.”
–Debbie Lynn Elias, Movie Shark Deblore
“Garriga is the new Alexis de Tocqueville..
“American Jesus” is to religion what de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (1835)
was to our national life then: a revealing outsider’s exploration of truths we Americans are too close to.”
–The Huffington Post
“…REQUIRED VIEWING FOR EVERYONE.”
–Red Letter Christians
Aram Garriga’s AMERICAN JESUS continues its festival run this weekend with a screening at SoulFest in Gilford, NH. As an added bonus, interviewee Frank Schaeffer (pictured) will be in attendance for a Q&A! Check out the SoulFest website for the full schedule of concerts, events, and other screenings.
I run a small production outfit in New York City called Glass Eye Pix. We are known for making independent horror-themed films with a psychological bent. Through the company I have produced such films as The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, Stake Land and I Sell the Dead. My own films include Habit, Wendigo and The Last Winter. Why would a company known for making independent horror films get involved with a documentary called American Jesus?
The answer is that I am primarily concerned with the construction of meaning in our daily lives, in the human tendency to see the world through narrative. My horror films have been about how we invent monsters and demons to deal with reality. In some way the subtext of my films is that the monsters we invent are a comfort and help us frame and define our existence.
In Habit, the protagonist believes his girlfriend is a vampire causing him to weaken physically, when we the viewer can plainly see he is a drunk debilitating himself. In Wendigo a 10-year-old invents a mythical being to protect himself from the horror that his father has been shot by a disgruntled hunter in the woods. I have always felt that my films are fundamentally about our craving for religious and mythic narratives in a senseless and arbitrary world.
And so it was not a stretch when the filmmaker Aram Garriga came to me with his proposal to make a film that was then titled Pop Church. I had met Garriga at the Sitges Film Festival outside Barcelona, one of the great horror and fantasy festivals in the world. Garriga worked for the fest and played host to myself and my producing associate Brent Kunkle on more than one visit to Sitges…”
Check out the full article at MovieMaker.com.
AMERICAN JESUS is now playing in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent and coming soon to Chicago. Also available on Demand and on DVD.
An exclusive clip is now available at Indiewire. See it here.
Glass Eye Pix presents
AMERICAN JESUS
a film by ARAM GARRIGA
Available On Demand and DVD
Tuesday MAY 13, 2014
Opening NYC at IFC
Wednesday MAY 14, 2014
Opening LA at Downtown Independent
Friday MAY 23, 2014
Coming to your town! Check:
AmericanJesusTheMovie.com
“Barcelona-native Aram Garriga makes a pilgrimage across America, conversing and consorting with Christ-loving bikers, street ministers, surfers, cowboys, and cage-fighters, exploring the wide spectrum of convictions, idiosyncrasies, and subcultures that populate this–to-many–parallel universe. It’s his outsider’s perspective that elevates him to a latter-day Alexis de Tocqueville as he studies America’s inclinations, character, prejudices and passions through its own preoccupation with, and entrapment within, the shimmering maze of materialistic determinism.
“Garriga’s gorgeously shot tableaux neither disparages nor mocks as it explores the paradoxical relationship between faith, politics, and the individual needs at odds with those of the collective’s in a world utterly foreign to the uninitiated. There is something to love and something to hate for both the secular and religious subset alike, and it’s perhaps that ingenious balance that makes this film one of the most important, honest, thought-provoking portraits of American society to date. Challenging and illuminating, this is bold, vanguard filmmaking at its finest.”
— Nicole McControversy
“TDC Entertainment, under its Shelter Island banner, has acquired DVD and nontheatrical North American rights to Glass Eye Pix’s documentary American Jesus. Gravitas Ventures will handle all VOD and broadcast rights for the film.
Aram Garriga’s portrait of Christianity in American culture had its world premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival, followed by its international premiere at the Sitges Film Festival. For the film, Garriga traveled from his native Barcelona to the U.S. to chronicle the relationship between faith, materialism, politics and personal passions on the American scene.”
Glass Eye Pix and co-producers Zabriskie Films and Visualsuspects are pleased to announce the world premiere of Aram Garriga’s ambitious portrait of Christianity in American Culture entitled AMERICAN JESUS at the 2013 Woodstock Film Festival on Friday Oct 4th followed by its international premiere at Sitges Film Festival Oct 11-20th.
Indiewire has the exclusive poster art for AMERICAN JESUS. (See it here.) Big thanks to artist Uri Moline for the design.
Check out the trailer below, and learn more about the film Continue Reading »
