Gideon Burton's Blog

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 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!

Mormon Cinema: Fit for the Kingdom

Documentary films by and about Mormons have mostly been an institutional thing. But Church films are constrained by a corporate public relations model and come out of and feed into an established official Mormon film aesthetic. That's the subject for another day. But Dean Duncan and Ben Unguren have inaugurated a series of short documentary films about everyday Latter-day Saints which is phenomenal with respect to sheer authenticity.