Preceded by short: Music to Watch Girls By (Christine Cynn, U.S., 1999). Strange visions of fecundity and psychic turmoil haunt a young woman in this unsettling short which augurs the end. (18:30 mins, Color, Beta SP, From the artist)The story begins: A resident of Hope-on-the-Prairie, New Mexico, Mary Anne Ward, is immaculately impregnated and gives birth to the messiah; then her baby is substituted for a female Antichrist named Lucy, after Lucifer. Alien seduction, governmental conspiracies, apocalyptic prophecies: Oppenheimer's The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase is a crazed travelogue of the rapturous landscape of American quirks and obsessions. Using interviews, B-movie clips, educational films, and dramatic stagings, the film shows us the dizzy remains of the Last Frontier, now populated by militia members, UFOlogists, self-proclaimed Antichrists, and general spooks. It's like a Main Street parade in Area 51. So what's Oppenheimer getting at? This self-described "fictional documentary" is really about the transformative power of fantasy. Though The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase may not (or may) be "true," it is certainly enacted within our collective fantasy. Along with the factual, history becomes a record of our cultural imagination. Mary Anne Ward's story, then, is our story in the light of American weirdness.-Steve Seid