Filmfest: WHY RELIGION?

About the Film

Documentary | 83 MIN | US

Q+A with Elaine Pagels and Jenny Mackenzie

COLORADO PREMIERE

In 1979, Elaine Pagels, the esteemed professor of Religion at Princeton University, wrote The Gnostic Gospels, and its publication sparked a firestorm of controversy in popular and spiritual culture. Presenting an alternative view of Christianity through previously hidden texts in the Nag Hammadi library, it was not the last time Pagels’ unprecedented and extensive academic work transformed our view of spirituality. Behind the public engagement with her work, however, Pagels experienced great love alongside great tragedy, all while maintaining her signature gentle questioning of life’s most fundamental questions. Award-winning documentarian Jenny Mackenzie paints a thoughtful, thorough, and insightful multidimensional portrait of the longtime Aspen resident who also happens to be one of the most fascinating thinkers of our time.

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