Leaving April 1

Directed by Michael Brynntrup | 128 mins | 1985
A punky black-and-white Super 8 telling of the life and afterlife of the Nazarene, this iconoclastic underground epic stars project initiator Brynntrup in the title role, seen in 35 episodes taken from the New Testament interpreted by 22 different filmmakers from all over divided Germany, both individual and collective. A blast of expressionistic excess and blasphemous burlesque originating from the heavily queer West Berlin avant-garde scene, whose singular method of production—none of the filmmakers were exposed to the work of their collaborators before picking up the camera to resume the shoot—was inspired by the surrealist game of “exquisite corpse.”