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Datum: Samstag, den 27. Dezember 2003, um 2:48 Uhr
Betrifft: jetzt im amerikanischen Fernsehen ... deshalb schimpfen die Stars nun erst recht

The Salt Lake Tribune
22.12.03

LDS missionaries give thumbs down to filmmaker’s documentary

By Peggy Fletcher Stack

    Nancy du Plessis is not the first outsider to propose following Mormon missionaries around as they knock on doors, but she may be the most dogged.
    From the time du Plessis encountered two U.S. missionaries on the Munich subway in 1997, it took the freelance documentary filmmaker more than five years to complete "Get the Fire! Young Mormon Missionary Abroad." Two years of research and talking LDS leaders into it. Two years of following three Utah boys as they proselytized across southern Germany. And another year to edit the piece that will be shown on KUED Channel 7 on Tuesday at 11 p.m.
    The film was not meant to showcase The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its theology, du Plessis said in a phone interview from her home in Munich. "It’s a picture-book example of what happens in a rite of passage."
    For those missionaries at the heart of the film, however, the project was an exercise in manipulation.
    "She’d always ask fishy questions, but they got worse and worse," Brady Flamm said Friday. "I was hurt when I saw the film, to say the least."
    "Get the Fire!" begins in the Salt Lake County living rooms of Flamm, Jake Erekson and Matt Higbee in 1999 as they got their assignments to the Munich mission. LDS officials had given the filmmaker their names and allowed her access to church services and rites normally off-limits to journalists.
    The camera follows Flamm, Erekson and Higbee through their language training and then to German city streets and homes. They are shown speaking imperfect German right off the plane, having doors slammed in their faces and singing hymns with fellow missionaries. She filmed Erekson getting engaged over the phone and later receiving a Dear John letter.
    Within months, du Plessis’ camera crew resigned and she tried to raise money, receiving some from the Utah Humanities Council and a New York arts agency. She bought a video camera and finished the film herself, which accounts for the amateurish lighting and sound, Flamm says.
    About a year into the process, the LDS Church withdrew its support. Flamm’s mission president gave him the choice of whether to continue, and he did.
    "I got nicer and nicer to her, thinking it would be harder for her to trash me," said Flamm, now married and studying finance at the University of Utah. "But she did anyway."
    All told, du Plessis compiled 300 hours of tape, which she edited down to less than 30 minutes. She then interspersed interviews with five former missionaries who have since left the church. One was gay, and the others had cultural and intellectual issues with the church. The film has no narrator.
    Du Plessis defended the inclusion of critics, saying, "Test audiences were always frustrated because they had questions to things that my subjects never wanted to talk about."
    But Flamm felt her editing created misleading or false impressions.
    One day, for example, du Plessis begged the missionaries to come to a German festival with traditional clothing, singing and dancing. It would be so colorful, she promised.
    It was just a beer fest. She filmed the young men’s disgust at being tricked, making it seem that they were upset at people drinking beer.
    Flamm said he understands the need for objectivity, and that an entirely positive movie wouldn’t be accurate either. But he felt that du Plessis juxtaposed critical comments with the missionaries’ everyday lives to "make us look naive or stupid."
    The film premiered last year in Europe. Flamm, who visited Germany last summer, said "every church member I talked to was offended."
    Flamm hasn’t spoken with Higbee about the film, but said Erekson told him good-naturedly, "At least we have a scrapbook video of our missions."

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/dec/12222003/monday/122197.asp
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