The Church Of The

The Church of the Little Green Man is a conceptual art practice that emerged from the East Village performance art scene. From tiny clubs in the mid-nineteen eighties to a restored historical church in upstate New York, the CLGM has endured for thirty years. This is Mike Osterhout's church. His approach is raw, provocative and gleefully absurd. He's embraced his obscurity as a badge of honor. In his heart, however, he thrives on human connections. His devotion to his community has allowed him to create a home for his congregation and a safe place to transgress in the Catskills.

In this portrait film, we meet Jared Dawson, an Atlanta-based drag queen and spiritual leader. The film centers around Jared’s drag queen persona, Lavonia Elberton, and Lavonia’s crucifixion performance for Atlanta’s Curious Queer Encounters. Jared discusses how his family’s conservative values forced him out of his own childhood home, and how he now navigates a new sense of belonging and family within the LGBTQ community of Atlanta.

Grethi Birger is 17 years old - and now stands all alone in the world. Her mother, the great singer, has died in Paris and she has never known his father.

A lively community of Christians inhabit Fangshan, a remote rural town in Jiangsu Province. At the start of the millennium, a church was built there with support of local inhabitants' relatives from Taiwan. On Sundays, up to 900 people gather to worship, while spending most of their days maintaining a modest living as farmers. Their faith governs how they handle family conflicts, illnesses and other difficulties. Still, they must contend with constraining forces in their community, from ancient folk religious practices to laws forbidding evangelism.

In the summer of 2007, Gan Xiaoer led an independent film projection team, using projectors and self-made screens, to tour villages in Henan province to show his feature film "Raised from dust" for 8 times, and recorded the process. The 81-minute version of Church Cinema records only one stop, the Qiliying Church, where "Raised from dust" was shot.

Early Balkan footage.

A young priest arrives in a provincial town. Thanks to his unconventional approach to his role as a clergyman, he manages to show what true love for one's neighbor is. He buys a cafe where he starts feeding some visitors for free and listens to their dramatic and tangled stories. The lives of people, as well as the priest himself, begin to change drastically.

After Mao Zedong's wife is killed in Changsha in 1930 by Nationalist agents, his three children are sent to Shanghai and kept in hiding.

During Queen Vilhelminas coronation.

Queen Vilhelminas coronation.

Since the days of early Russian traders in the mid-1700s, the Russian Orthodox church has had a place in the history of rural Alaska. "A Legacy of Faith" looks at the beliefs, traditions, and people of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska. From St. Michael's Cathedral in Sitka, to St. Herman's Seminary in Kodiak, to an all-night Easter service in the village of Russian Mission.

Spanning four centuries on a joyful voyage of music and heritage, Seeking Salvation traces the history of the Black Church and considers its future in a changing society.