Mary to Play in New York

Following on from yesterday's post Peter Chattaway also posted the news that Abel Ferrara's Mary is to get it's first public screening in his native New York. There's also a piece on Ferrara in the New York Times which contains a few hundred words on the film, including the following excerpts:

But when he started working on Mary — "living within three blocks of the Vatican," he noted — he revisited the Bible and this time approached it "as a revolutionary tome."

Mr. Modine, who first worked with Mr. Ferrara on The Blackout", said via e-mail that he and Mr. Ferrara prepared by poring over ancient scripture. "Abel and I tried to strip away the interpretations and poetic language", he said.

Like a more serious and angst-ridden Da Vinci Code, the film draws on Gnostic texts that have offered alternate views of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity... With its sincerely ambivalent efforts to plumb the nature of belief, it’s the rare movie that could stand as a rebuke to both The Passion of the Christ and Religulous.

By the way, it seems that in addition to the French and German DVD releases for this film there is now also a Spanish version.