Hardcore for Jesus hits the big screen

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      The movie ChristCORE, which takes an intimate look at the world of evangelical hardcore music, is finally getting its Vancouver premiere next week.

      Filmmaker Justin Ludwig’s film has been winning over critics and festival audiences on its journey across the country, mingled with the general bemusement that you’d expect over its subject matter. As Toronto’s Grid memorably puts it: “Thrashing for Jesus”?  It happens.  

      Growing up inside Regina’s punk scene, director Ludwig (now a Vancouver resident) said that he was shocked—“maybe even pissed off or offended”—when he first learned that evangelical hardcore was even a thing. He nonetheless put himself on the road with two of the genre’s noisiest do-gooders: Texan band Messengers and the wildly popular (with somebody, at any rate) Sleeping Giant, from California (and Utah).

      “Hardcore was always a really secular outlet for me, and one that really helped to undo a lot of my Catholic upbringing,” Ludwig told the Straight. “But when we set out to make the movie, the goal shifted. I wanted to explore this world that was totally foreign to me. And I’m glad that we did go in with an open mind, because we met a lot of great people.”

      ChristCORE screens at the Rio Theatre on August 6 and 8, with Ludwig attending both screenings. 

      Comments

      2 Comments

      frank

      Aug 4, 2013 at 2:07pm

      @ HonkeyTonk, Grow up and stop being so full of yourself. What movement are you talking about - movie making? What's really sick is people with egos so big they think their opinion is the only one that matters. I'll bet you are willing to give non religious movements the benefit of the doubt, but not religious movements. How hypocritical and so typically left wing(nut).

      A. MacInnis

      Aug 5, 2013 at 11:48am

      My favourite story about these guys is from the Demon Hunter Wikipedia page (tho' there are differing interpretations offered): apparently after various metal bands objected to their music being used as an implement of torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and such, Demon Hunter contacted the US military and offered to let them use THEIR music...