This past weekend the annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters was held at Utah Valley State College. I presented on "Authentic Mormon Cinema" (download audio file here, or play it below), talking through key points of the paper I'm writing on this subject, specifically raising and discussing the various criteria to be considered in what constitutes Mormon Cinema.
Listen to the speech here: >
The conference gave me a chance to crystallize some of my thinking and I now am looking at a set of criteria for considering authenticity, underneath these headings:
Criteria for Authenticity
- Principal Creative Personnel
- Creative "ownership" (a company, an institution, a director [auteur], a university, etc.)
- Subject Matter
- Intended Audience(s) and Exhibition
- Reception and Response
- Genre (narrative or documentary, various subgenres)
- Format and Distribution
- Style
- Purpose
Examples from any of these illustrate the problem of pinpointing authenticity. Just because the writer or director is Mormon does not make their film "Mormon" and on down the list.
I met Hunter and Richard Hale of Hale Video, who received recognition for the DVD they just put out of Trapped by the Mormons.
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