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on passion and Joan of Arc:

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# Passion d’Avril

It’s Passion Sunday, the Sunday between Mothering and Palm. It’s one of a couple of dates where some denominations begin Passiontide, a short season to remember Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. By some reckonning, it’s Passiontide now, so it’s no longer Lent, so this project should cease immediately. By another count, Lent is 40 days long *including* Sundays, meaning Passiontide starts about a week from now. Others still would say Passiontide is part of Lent, and shouldn’t be regarded as non-Lenten.

What do people do during Passiontide. Last year I made a film called Passiontide during Passiontide, which was a feverish McDonald’s western about dying. Most people don’t do that. More traditionally, this is the season to cover all your icons and crucifixes with purple cloth.

By the way, it’s not ‘passion’ as in ‘music and passion were always in fashion at the Copacabana’, but passion as in suffering, as in The Passion of the Christ, that horrid but necessary film, or The Passion of Joan of Arc, which is one of the very best silent films.

I will always stick up for silent films, if they’re from the twenties. Nineteen-tens cinema don’t impressa me much, as they hadn’t invented film grammar or the close-up yet, but by the twenties, actors and cameras were able to tell stories visually, excitingly, and in a way that stands up just as well nowadays.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a movie about St Joan’s trial and death, which was a colossal travesty of justice, and very much echoed Jesus’s similarly unfair end jean d’Arc was many things: a hero, a saint, a general, the French Mulan, a prophet and a victim of all kinds of discrimination. As a child I always assumed she was must have been wrong about her divine calling to rally the troops and lead the war - mainly because she was defeated and executed - though those things very much didn’t stop Jesus - but I also assumed Joan was in the wrong because she was French and dared to fight the English. I think that was rather naive of me. I would have like to meet Joan, and I look forward to doing so once we’re all dead.

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from Ben Them: a Tale of the Christ, released March 2, 2022

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Ben Swithen Sheffield, UK

Ben Swithen is a person.

Here you can find their music - solo work, and a Doctor-Who- and-Cheese double-concept concept-album by The Potential Bees (who are a two- or three- person band), which forces both concepts into every song).

You can also find Ben Swithen on Youtube, but why would you even? ... more

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