Text by Wim Peeters

The Apocalyptic Man is a fictional story built up out of gratuitous and coincidental footage. We find ourselves in Central Mexico where Diaz Morales spent six months filming. The place's daily routines are largely devoted to religious processions, cock fights and parties which the author registered as prime subject matter. Later, the images were linked to passages from the novella Los siete locos (1929) by the Latin American writer Roberto Arlt. The text is added to the edited material as a catalyst. The perfect blend of layered meanings retrospectively seems to enable Diaz Morales' camera to project scripts onto reality. In narrative terms, The Apocalyptic Man entangles us in the compulsive paranoia of a man on the run from reality, enemies, or his own conscience and the dizzying images reveal to us a dystrophic vision that, stone by stone, seems to close ever tighter on its creator. There is no possible escape - should the world go up in smoke or should the myopic leading figure itself dissolve. Arlt's protagonist ends up killing himself. The Apocalyptic Man postpones deliverance in a lingering restlessness that remains a latent bomb at the core of society.