Mormon Scene-IT

This month I was responsible for the Young Men / Young Women activity in my ward. Knowing that I would be sitting in Amy's class the night of the activity I had to plan something someone else could take care of. I decided to do "Mormon Scene-IT" I watched quite a few Mormon movies and riped parts of others. My quorum of young men came up with 30 movie clips and 60 questions. I authored a DVD and will find out how it went on Wednesday.

Watching all these old movies I kept thinking of post-war Europe and all the French movie fans watching the flood of American films. Looking at all the films at once thy were able to see patterns in the films and developed Auteur theory. I watched many Mormon films in a short period of time and developed the Death-ure theory. There is a time period in Mormon cinema when death was the motivator / threat / moment to teach in all films.
"The Mailbox" - old lady dies
"Build you a Rainbow" - Mom Dies
"Gold-fish for show-n-tell" - little boy dies
"The bridge" - Dad watched son die.
"Uncle Ben" - Ben's sister dies.
"The well" - man drinks bottle of water and dies.
"Sypher in the snow" - Boy dies because no one loves him.
"That which was lost" - Hippie girl wigs out on drugs and almost dies.

There are more but I don't have my list with me right now. The church has certainly changed the tone and feeling of their productions. I actually fear that the church might try and remove some of these movies because it is not in line with their current image. I hope I can track some of these films for my personal collection. Despite these films focusing on death they did teach some gospel principles very effectively, and some of today's productions are just plain terrible.

Application: I guess this would be more for my practice and skill development. There are opportunities to discuss Mormon cinema in class but watching these films in class could cause some disruption. I like Bradley's suggestion of looking at some films and using the written film analysis to add to the students' experiences.