Portland Documentary & eXperimental Film Festival

Gospel Recordings is an evangelical organization founded in 1939 whose mission is to record and distribute stories from the bible in all the languages and dialects of the world. Now, more than sixty years into their effort, the organization has honed their sights on the population they call the tailenders, so dubbed because they are the last to be reached by the evangelicals. Outfitted with recording devices and primitive playback appliances, the missionaries frequently target communities in crisis because they have found these communities to be particularly receptive to the evangelical message. The Tailenders, filmmaker Adele Horne’s feature debut, follows Gospel Recordings as they interact with indigenous cultures and in doing so, weaves a complex commentary on global capitalism, religion, and the power of the human voice.