Friday, April 27----The Tribeca Film Festival is presenting the North American Premiere of a unique blend of music and moving image, entitled PASSIO. This extraordinarily powerful film sets the music of composer Arvo Part's Passio, one of the great modern masterpieces of 20th century music, against images created by Paolo Cherchi Usai. The film is silent and in black and white, with some sequences hand-colored to create a kaleidoscopic effect.

This unique presentation will be offered four times during this weekend at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine in upper Manhattan and Trinity Church, New York's oldest, on Wall Street. The music will be performed by the Trinity Choir, with Owen Burdick conducting, and feature solos by organist Robert Ridgell. The interaction between the passionate music and the expressionistic imagery creates a profoundly moving meditation on the very act of seeing.

Paolo Cherchi Usai is one of the world’s most respected film historians and scholars. With PASSIO, he has drawn on his immense knowledge of world cinema to create a stunning and revelatory film of surprising emotional and narrative power, one that explores the impending crisis of visual culture and its reflection in politics and society. Its disturbing images, drawn from a century of filmmaking, are woven into a tapestry of mysterious beauty and violence. Unmissable.

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Online Dailies Editor