Big-Screen Religion

Most Mormons are exposed to this kind of media from the time they are young, and it can have a lasting impact on the way they think about film, Astle says.

Independent Mormon filmmakers often learn their trade at the Mormon Church's own film industry. The LDS Mormon Studios sprawls on a 20-acre campus, with two soundstages and Avid editing suites with paintings of Jesus on the wall. This is where hundreds of church-funded TV commercials and educational videos are produced every year. It's also where many of the new independent filmmakers got their start as interns while they were students at BYU.

"One of our main problems in the genre is that most of the people have a hard time stepping away from that," says Dutcher. "When they go out and make a movie about Mormons, they have a missionary feel, [as if] they have an obligation to make more Mormons in the world," he says.

One thing filmmakers have to figure out is how to tell stories that are more realistic, even if that means they are sometimes unflattering to Mormons, says Dutcher. In the mid-1990s he started thinking there could be a market of 5 million Mormons across the country interested in seeing images that were truer to their lives. His movie "God's Army," a story of two Mormon missionaries in Los Angeles, was released nationwide in 2000 and earned him $2.6 million at the box office, more than 10 times what he spent on the film.

Dozens of filmmakers followed the example, and within five years, the new Mormon Cinema has seen the release of "Napoleon Dynamite," co-written and directed by BYU grad Jared Hess, which took in about $45 million; though the film isn't overtly Mormon, the community claims both it and Hess, who worked behind the camera on some early HaleStorm productions. And then there's Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller, who has put millions of dollars behind a series of movies called "The Work and the Glory" that tell the early history of the Mormon Church.

The Mormon indie scene continues to grow: Three years ago, the LDS Film Festival had no full-length feature films; this year it had 10, including submissions from Mormon filmmakers in England and Norway, said festival organizer Christian Vuissa. And up the hill at Slamdance -- a higher profile alternative festival in Park City -- four films showing this week were produced by Latter-day Saints.

But can Mormon filmmakers create mainstream, popular fare that still keeps the faith? Maria Elena de las Carreras, a visiting professor of film history at UCLA, says it's safer to create films that can appeal to religious people by dealing with Judeo-Christian values, without singling out one faith.

"You can make a film about sacrifice and redemption and suffering, like 'The Lord of the Rings' -- a film dealing with the human condition and the dangers of being human and how someone responds to a higher power," she notes.

Many filmmakers disagree that they should have to mute the Mormonness to make a film that will appeal to general audiences.

Filmmaker Greg Whiteley says his Mormon viewpoint actually gives him an edge in the industry. "A lot of filmmakers here in Los Angeles don't have a strong vision of the world. Religion helps you have that, " he says. Whiteley's first documentary film, "New York Doll," about rocker-turned-Mormon Arthur "Killer" Kane, premiered at Sundance last year.

"The trick is to allow your view of the world to be shaped, in turn, by whatever it is you're filming so that your characters don't become two-dimensional and moralistic," he adds.

Tasha Oldham, a Los Angeles-based Mormon filmmaker, says she's found that people are fascinated with Latter-day Saints. She directed "The Smith Family," a documentary about a Mormon family with a gay father and husband who dies of complications of AIDS, which was seen by 6 million viewers on PBS in 2002 and earned her an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award from the Directors Guild of America.

She says she's rooting for the release of a Mormon-themed success that will truly translate some of their cultural idiosyncrasies to a wider audience: "We're still waiting for our Mormon version of 'Our Big Fat Greek Wedding.' "