Visions of Ecstasy

An 18-minute experimental film, Nigel Wingrove's VISIONS OF ECSTASY (1989) is the only motion picture ever banned outright in the UK solely on the grounds of blasphemy. Its depiction and interpretation of the erotic imaginings of the 16th-century Carmelite nun, St. Teresa, were such that the film's banning was upheld in an historic judgement at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in a case that took seven years to reach its conclusion. Now, due to the abolition of the UK's blasphemy laws in 2008, VISIONS O ECSTASY—previously unseen in the US—is finally being released.

Also on this disc are several other early works by visionary filmmaker Nigel Wingrove that blend his trade-mark eroticism with a painterly eye for color and composition, always underscored with a diabolical flair for the perverse.