Cristo. 1977. France. Directed by Teo Hernández. Super 8 mm transferred to 16 mm. Courtesy Mnam/Cci Centre Pompidou. 64 min.
Cristo is the first section of a four-film cycle (The Body of the Passion) in which Teo Hernández reconfigures mythology as lived presence, stripping the narrative of Christ’s Passion into ritual gesture, sculptural stillness, and the charged materiality of bodies and objects. Rather than recounting sacred episodes, Cristo lets myth pass through contemporary performers, whose fleshliness reshapes religious meaning from within. Veiling and unveiling, ecstasy and wound, desire and death interlace in compositions that recall devotional painting while dissolving historical distance. Time dilates in solemn duration, as the figure of Christ disperses into everyday objects, people, and their gestures. “We disguise myths so we can undress them afterward. Rather than plunging in a mythical interpretation, Cristo ‘comes’ to the screen, it becomes the mirror in which the performers are reflected as they are in reality. The film becomes a gallery of mirrors, a gallery of portraits. Christ is not in the film, [Christ] is the film” (Teo Hernández).