Hail Satan?

Film program, US 2019, 95 min., engl. OV

By: Penny Lane

With: Lucien Greaves, Jex Blackmore

Satanism like you‘ve never seen it before! In August 2018, at the instigation of The Satanic Temple and in the name of religious freedom, a statue of the occult deity Baphomet was erected in front of a US State Capitol Building – next to a monument representing the Christian 10 Commandments and as a plea against religious intolerance. Within a few years, the Satanic Temple, founded by the activist Lucien Greaves, has gone from a clever media PR gag to an internationally recognized (meta) religion with hundreds of thousands of followers. But is it really a religion? Or a cult? Or rather a highly intelligent group of political performance artists on a subversive crusade for freedom of expression, sexual self-determination and the separation of church and state? For her incredibly entertaining and yet highly political documentary, Penny Lane accompanied current and former members of the temple in the preparation and execution of the Baphomet action.