The Book of Life

On 31 December 1999, Jesus arrives at Kennedy Airport in New York. He is in the company of his attractive and intriguing assistant Magdalena.Hartley does not work with the material or in the way we would expect and the result is a different Hartley. This is his first film shot on digital video and he feels the need to investigate and experiment with this medium that is new to him. Hartley was very impressed by the pictures taken by the tiny camera, but they were not like the pictures he was looking for when making a 35mm film. He tried to find out the strong points of the new medium and adapted his approach to suit them. The result is kaleidoscopic. Rapidly moving images and pounding music evoke a technological, computerised and modernist world.Hartley was not only interested in working with digital video for aesthetic reasons, he also sees it as a sensible economic investigation. There is after all not much money available for the kind of film that he wants to make, so investigating ways of making cheap films is a necessity.The role of Magdalena is played by pop musician P.J. (Polly Jean) Harvey. Her songs are used in the film alongside those of e.g. David Byrne. The film was made as part of 2000 vu par… (see also La vie sur terre, Last Night, The Hole, The First Night of My Life and Midnight).