Gideon Burton's Blog

The Book of Jer3miah: New Media Mormonism

This week the first season of The Book of Jer3miah concluded, a 20-webisode Internet drama that can only be described as a spiritual thriller based on Mormon themes. Praised as "a tight, suspenseful little series" in a Salon.com blog post, it has garnered a respectable fan base reaching well beyond LDS or Utah audiences. In addition to lighting the blogosphere with animated arguments (as much from within as outside Mormonism), the series has caught the attention of mainstream media, including the New York Times.

Animated Films at BYU: First Look

What I love about the university setting for film is that students truly have fun with the medium, bringing to their projects a playfulness and energy that transcends, often enough, the lack of polish in their early efforts. And when this is combined with first-class facilities (to the point that Pixar comes to recruit at BYU ahead of other places, I have heard), and is led by enthusiastic and accommodating faculty, then little pieces of magic start to happen.

Episode 210 of the First Look series on BYU-TV (one of two devoted to animated student films), includes four films that represent the evolution of animation at BYU into what is now a full-fledged program at the university garnering regular awards (See a list of all their films at their BYU website).

Mormon Films and Videos -- Not just in theaters or on YouTube

 

Forget the local cineplex. Mormon movies rarely make it there and if they do they are in the theater so short a time that you dare not leave your seat for popcorn or the film won't be there when you get back.  Actually, I'm hopeful about the niche Mormon market for mainstream theater releases, but distribution is limited, as are titles coming out. What about YouTube? Ah, that great melting pot of digital culture. Like the apocrypha, there are some worthy nuggets amid the anti-Mormon films and digital dross. But you might try these alternatives, too. It's a mixed bag, to be sure, but there are more outlets for Mormon films and videos than you might have thought...

"The Passionate Work of New Young [BYU] Filmmakers"

My post title quotes Dr. Charles Metten, introducing the first episode of a new BYU-TV weekly series that features films and filmmakers from BYU. Theatre and Media Arts professor Sharon Swenson is shown here from a later episode interviewing Scott Christopherson, writer/director of the biographical Only the Pizza Man Knows, prior to the screening of Christopherson's half-hour cinematic essay. Brad Barber and Steven Enfield are producing these wraparound interviews to contextualize the student films and help viewers understand the motives and processes young filmmakers go through.

Man's Search for Happiness

I thought I would take a stab at uploading a brief video clip to illustrate my comments on one of Mormonism's most famous films, Man's Search for Happiness (1964).

Films about Mormon Women

The recent film festival film, The Errand of Angels, about female Mormon missionaries, has raised some interest in Mormon women as the subjects of film generally (pictured here is a shot from the recent Emma Smith: My Story [2007]). I thought it might be nice to enumerate some of the films that have focused more closely on LDS women, whether those films are theatrical, fictional, or documentary in nature. I've even included some filmed lectures about women. These are not exhaustive lists, but a good starting point. Many more films about or by LDS women can be found in the Mormon Literature & Creative Arts database, and I invite anyone to add suggestions of other films or categories.

LDS Film Festival 2008 (part 5): The Errand of Angels

The Errand of Angels is the first film entirely about female Mormon missionaries, and director Christian Vuissa--founder of the LDS Film Festival--gets the sub-genre off to a vigorous start with a visually stunning and thoroughly engaging tale of sister missionaries at work in Austria.

Giving authenticity to the film is co-producer Heidi Johnson, whose own missionary experiences were the basis of the film. Mormon cinema fans will recognize the talents of Erin Chambers (The Singles 2nd Ward) and Rachel Emmers (States of Grace), both of whom put a beautiful face on sister missionary work with their vivacity and earnestness.

LDS Film Festival 2008 (part 4): Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons

In a telling interview in Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, a woman named Tamu admits she doesn't mind explaining her religious faith to blacks, but she does mind explaining her race to fellow Mormons. This documentary is serving both purposes. It dares to show black audiences that African-Americans have embraced Mormonism from the beginning and have stayed and grown in their faith in Christ despite mistreatment inconsistent with Christianity or Mormonism's own egalitarian principles. And the documentary also dares to show to Mormons the high cost of their racism and the flimsiness of those rationalizations (sometimes propagated from the top) that kept black Latter-day Saints from the full blessings of church membership for a century.

LDS Film Festival 2008 (part 3): Wrestling with God

"Wrestling with God" is one of the reasons I go to a film festival. This 22-minute "conversational drama" was not your typical movie, and I applaud its three producers and three actors for having the guts to do something completely outside the mold but inside the heart of Mormonism. (Pictured here is one of the actors, Niki Nielsen). As the producers/directors explained it afterwards, the origin of the film was a deep conversation they'd had about what it means to live the Mormon faith. Someone had the presence of mind to make a recording of this (which was then transcribed into a draft of the screenplay). Whoa! All I can say is that I'd love to have these people over to chat at my house!

LDS Film Festival 2008 (part 2): Happy Valley

All 700 of us raised our hands. All of us who had just seen Happy Valley, the documentary about drug abuse in Utah that screened at the LDS Film Festival last night. Filmmaker Ron Williams simply asked during the Q&A if someone close to us had a drug abuse problem. We are mostly Utahns and mostly Mormons and yes, our friends and family members suffer from the blight of drug abuse. It was sobering.

I have a great respect for films and filmmakers using the medium to address serious issues. I saw it two years ago with the sobering film Propensity, reaching out to the suicidal, and last year with Samuel Adams' early-return missionary doc, Returning With Honor (about which I've previously blogged). You can tell the difference between this sort of films and others because the discussion after the festival screenings is not about distribution or film careers but about reaching out to those suffering.