Dark Before Dawn

Video by Elder Gideon

Set on a vast prairie landscape, Dark Before Dawn is a short experimental documentary that plumbs the liminal moment of balance between light and darkness, beginning and end. From the same dark silhouettes of the landscape, this intimate meditation unfolds scenes gazing east into the dawn or west into the dusk. The ambivalence of light and time envelops the viewer in a mystical embrace beyond duality.

Elder Gideon holds an MFA in Poetry, keeps a decades-long iconography practice, teaches high school English to underrepresented students, and is in discipleship learning the oral tradition of a Gnostic master, Tau Malachi, with whom he co-authored “Gnosis of Guadalupe” (EPS Press, 2017). 

Gideon thrives in collaboration. He produced and performed his chapbook “Owl Songs” set to original music by Sean Wall. This is available on all music streaming services. The thesis of “Owl Songs” drives his second collaboration with Sean Wall and Canandian filmmaker Bevan Klassen: “Dark Before Dawn” is his first film production. 

Gideon is a queer faith leader. His creative concerns orbit divinity in materiality. The spiritual crises facing postmodern and marginalized youth around the world is the subject of his first poetry collection “Aegis of Waves,” of which fourteen pieces have appeared in print and online journals.