Philosophy with a Hammer was a twenty minute film / video written, directed and produced by Mark St.John Ellis and filmed by the photographer Daniel Faoro on super 8 mm, inspired by the paintings of the Baroque era. It was then transfered to video and edited in that format to a piece of music written by Mark. The project alongside other short films by the collaboration, started in the mid to late eighties and was completed in 1990. In 1991 it was shown at the preview cinema, The Bijou in Soho, London. From this event came the offer of distribution from the London based World Serpent Distribution and in 1994 they released the film in video format for Europe and the United States of America. In 2002 it was part of a video art exhibition for the launch of the album Breath of Lazarus. Mark curated an event of music, sound and visuals hosted at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 2006, where an extract from the film had been re-edited and projected to Elijah's Mantle music. For the release of the retrospective, Observations of an Atheist, it was again re-edited in collaboration with the artist John Beattie and shown as a two screen monitor installation, featuring Jean - Paul Martinon, in nag gallery in 2010. It is in this format with the final version of Miserere de Profundis, as shown together in the gallery, that it appears on the website. It demonstrates how by repetition of the two sequences of film, the viewer never experiences the two sections together as they are constantly shifting out of sync from each other.
