Tessie Anchondo's eyes brimmed with tears as the Lensic theater darkened Wednesday night for the premiere of El Corazón de Santa Fe, a film about the Catholic faith and the 400 years of Santa Fe's history commissioned by Friends of the Cathedral Basilica and the Santa Fe Community Foundation.

Anchondo wasn't the only one to cry during the 82-minute film, which included images of the cathedral along with Santa Fe's skies and landscapes, historic photos and sounds of familiar folk music and hymns.

Later, another woman told director Tony Martinez that when she could speak about the film without weeping, she would.

Anchondo said she wept during the panning shots of religious art inside the cathedral, such as the close-ups of the wooden statue of La Conquistadora, Our Lady of Peace.

"I thought of my parents," she said, still dabbing at her eyes during intermission. "They lived to their 90s and I just lost them a few years ago ... We have a family of five siblings, and we were all born in Santa Fe, baptized in the cathedral. All of us went to the St. Francis school. All of us were married in the cathedral. I just thought a lot about that."

The work of Anchondo and other volunteers appears in footage of the recent cathedral restoration. For about a year, she was part of the crew repainting decorative art on the walls of the sanctuary.

She also joined the crowd in the theater who gasped when the narrator of the film explained that Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy — the man who raised the money to erect the grand edifice in the 1860s — shunned certain practices of Catholicism that he thought had come to characterize Northern New Mexico by burning the santos that decorated churches.

But just after a discussion of works of art that depict figures such as a bleeding Jesus Christ on a cross, Anchondo and the packed house laughed when the voice of Rev. Msgr. Jerome Martinez y Alire talked about women who ask for help with the prayer, "St. Anne, St. Anne, get me a man as fast as you can."

The range of emotions from the audience was all part of what director Martinez, no relation to the monsignor, hoped to see.

As he watched the crush of 750 movie-goers make their way up the red carpet and into the theater where he saw Elvis on the silver screen as a kid, Martinez became excited.

"This film means so much to me. This is my history. This is my DNA. These are my people," he said. "I expected there to be interest in the film, but I didn't expect it to be this overwhelming."

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe granted full cooperation to Martinez and his crew and took unprecedented steps such as allowing the filmmaker to crawl around below the subfloor of the cathedral beyond the crypt where Lamy and other leaders are buried, and agreeing not to exercise any form of censorship, he said.

Martinez y Alire, a prominent voice in the film, seemed proud Wednesday when he gave a brief introduction.

"This is the story of saints and sinners, and tonight, you will see both ... sometimes mixed up in the same person," he said.

The film is not all praise for the institution. It remembers Doña Tules, a frontier businesswoman who some say was a courtesan or even a prostitute, and who donated money for the cathedral construction. It also touches on the fact that Spanish settlers and Catholic clergy abused Indians and created lasting tension, but also asserts that what eventually emerged was a largely harmonious multicultural community.

Filmgoer Robert Ochoa said he left feeling good about the future.

"It's a totally different generation now and everybody is looking at things in a different way, and even with all this conflict, we still come together, and that is what makes us the City Different."

Patricia Sanchez, who lives in Lamy, said she was pleased with the cast of characters, which featured area residents such as children from Carlos Gilbert Elementary School and costumed volunteers at El Rancho de las Golondrinas historical museum.

"It was really nice the way they included a lot of locals and a lot of history," said Sanchez, who brought her teen-age daughter and mother-in-law to the film. "That's exactly what my Catholic faith is about — to go back in history and that was the most important thing."

DVDs of the documentary are on sale at the Cathedral Gift Shop or can be ordered by calling 989-9102.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.