The Coolidge Corner Theatre

Thurs, March 29 @ 7:00

FREE and open to the public

A special pre-broadcast screening of SISTER AIMEE, a one-hour documentary about the influential evangelist for public television's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, from four-time Emmy-award-winning producer Linda Garmon. The documentary is based on a new biography, "Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America," by Matthew Avery Sutton, and following the screening, the author will sign books at the Coolidge Corner Barnes & Noble Bookstore.

Drawing larger crowds than P.T. Barnum, Harry Houdini or Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900s, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson brought a unique blend of charisma, humor and theatrics to a ministry that would usher into the mainstream a controversial form of worship that involves healing and speaking in tongues; she would set the stage for present-day evangelists, mixing entertainment and religion and also trying to blur the line between church and state; and she would mysteriously disappear, setting off a media firestorm. The speculation in the press about whether Sister Aimee had been kidnapped, as she later maintained, or had staged her own disappearance or had run off with a lover rocked her religious empire. Like so many celebrity stories, Aimee's was tragic. While at the helm of a mammoth empire, surrounded by legions of adoring followers, Aimee Semple McPherson was fundamentally alone.