From the "People" Archives:

by Aaron Krach

As an activist film and videomaker, Catherine Gund's reputation is firmly established. Since graduating from Brown University in 1988, she has exhibited dozens of pieces relating to civil liberties, women's issues, AIDS and gay and lesbian rights. Now with the imminent release of "Hallelujah! Ron Athey: a Story of Deliverance" she will become known as the one who shot Ron Athey -- at least conceptually. Over the past few years she accumulated over 100 hours of footage while documenting his career as one of America's most intense and notorious performance artists.

Ron Athey is an L.A. based performance artist known for weaving religion, sex and violence into his own personal theater of cruelty -- violent yes, but also incredibly moving. Thanks to an unfortunate run-in with the NEA, Athey and his troupe have spent the last several years performing outside the States. His work is well known, but not actually well seen. Gund's film is the long awaited answer to that problem. By patiently documenting his live performances, his work will now have the opportunity to reach a much broader audience. And so will Gund, as she segues from the small activist community into the independent film world. In between taking the film to numerous festivals, Gund spoke with indieWIRE about the film and all the special challenges it entailed. First Run Features opens "Hallelujah" in New York and L.A. on December 9th.

indieWIRE: Your background is in activist filmmaking. How did you get involved with Ron Athey and his underground performance scene?

Catherine Gund: I sort of backed into "Hallelujah" in a totally pleasurable way. A good friend of mine used to perform with Ron and they were on the way to Mexico and they wanted someone to come along and film it. There were two reasons; one was because they needed someone to document it, because they were doing the whole trilogy. The second reason was because in [Part 3] Martyrs and Saints, there is all this fine mouth piercing and what not. They knew the people in the back wouldn't be able to see. So they wanted someone up on stage taping it. They then put six monitors in the back so that all the close-ups were actually shown simultaneously in the back. . . . So we got back and I thought this was so excellent. He thought it was really cool. And we said maybe someday we should make a movie.

iW: But that was a couple of years ago, right?

Gund: Eventually I got really close to the group, which was helpful because then they started to expect me to be around. Then the Estate Project for artists living with HIV and AIDS was working with Ron to archive all of his materials at the UCLA archive. Videos, articles about him, articles by him, dubs from friends, they were working on this incredible archive. To round it out they wanted to have a more comprehensive oral history and they asked him who he wanted to do it. He said if I'm going to talk to anyone on camera it's gotta be Catherine. So they called and asked me to do it and interview some of the other performers. I said sure. At that point I said, Ron we've got to make a movie.

iW: After those years how much footage had you accumulated?

Gund: We had a lot of stuff --about 101 hours including music. My editor was working at a day job and got access to the equipment for us. And worked for nothing.

iW: There are many ways of entering Ron's work; via theater, sexuality, HIV issues, power, etc. How did you connect with his work?

Gund: The AIDS thread was really important to me. That was part of why I understood his work -- why it was interesting and compelling to me. It's because of AIDS that his work exists. It's not like AIDS gets tacked on. His whole questioning of meaning and his interest and willingness to challenge pain with pain. Obviously it didn't originate there, that was in the Pentecostal freak show. But I think that's how his later work congealed. It's also why his later work is the most powerful. And that is really a story about AIDS. Which is why it was so interesting to tape in Croatia, where AIDS isn't the thing, but they had dealt with so much death. To them it suddenly became this universal story. Which is what I think AIDS is. It also enlightened them about AIDS.

iW: As a performance artist who definitely pushes the envelope of acceptability, Ron's work is considerably marginalized. What kind of audience are you hoping will come and see the film?

Gund: The audience for me, is those who are interested but wouldn't take themselves to a show. Obviously it's for people who've been to a show too, but there are only about 2000 of them around the country. There are a lot of people who are interested in the issues and the movie brings out the issues. It can give some meaning to what he's doing without just being a bloodbath. The buzz from people who've seen it so far has a real appreciation for the contextualization.

iW: Noticeably absent from the film are any outside voices. The only people talking and explaining the work are Ron and his troupe of performers. What was you strategy behind that decision?

Gund: I don't have any critics, or any press people or any audience members speaking in the movie. That was so conscious because people say things like, ‘oh man. That was so intense and all about life and death.' First of all, it doesn't end up all that articulate. And as a performance artist, I wanted to play with the meaning of putting that on film. I wanted to make it an unmediated space between the audience of the movie and the performance work. Although you hear from other performers you don't hear from any other outside person.