Since 2001 I’ve been involved in the creation of the field of Mormon film studies, with other forays into Mormon cultural criticism, through the following publications and activities:
February 2001 – Presented “Battling Over Zion: Purity in Heart and the Modern Motion Picture” at the third Religious Education Student Symposium at Brigham Young University
September 2000-December 2001 – Served as the web manager for Brigham Young University’s International Cinema program, updating the website each week with current and upcoming screenings
December 2001 – Received second place in the LDS Film Festival’s screenwriting competition for my short script Taco Veloz, about various Mormon characters negotiating life and romance in the style of Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express
January 2002 – Co-wrote, co-directed, and co-edited, with Rocky Hansen, the 28-minute documentary Til We Meet Again: The Story of the Danish Saints, about the sesquecentennial of the LDS Church in Denmark and the creation of two commemorative statues by Art & Belief Movement artist Dennis Smith
April 2002 – Wrote the 12-minute wordless narrative film Avernus, about the Orpheus myth, for LDS director Andrew Black
April 2002 – Worked as a script supervisor on the 28-minute narrative film Roots and Wings by Christian Vuissa, about a Catholic Mexican immigrant’s struggle when his family converts to Mormonism
April 2002 – Received the Outstanding Student Recognition Award in Theatre & Media Arts at Brigham Young University
October 2000-August 2002 – Worked for BYU documentary production faculty and College of Fine Arts assistant dean April Chabries Makgoeng, researching and writing scripts, performing clerical, production, and production management functions, and working with the college administration to create the BYU Animation Department
May-August 2002 – Worked for LDS film scholar Darl Larsen, conducting research and transcribing material for his two academic books on Monty Python
October 2000-December 2002 – Worked as a screenwriter, interviewer, production assistant, transcriptionist, and assistant editor on the 55-minute historical documentary The Best Crop: A History of Orchard Farming in Orem, Utah, by April Chabries Makgoeng, which aired on PBS in Utah
October 2001-December 2002 – Helped create and organize the first and second editions of the LDS Film Festival with festival founder Christian Vuissa, including founding and commissioning presentations for the LDS Film Forum portion of the festival, the first academic forum on Mormon cinema, with presenters including Gideon Burton, Travis Anderson, Daryl Lee, and James D’arc
December 2002 – Judged the screenwriting submissions for the second LDS Film Festival
December 2002 – Wrote the introduction and edited the presentations from the 2001 LDS Film Festival’s Film Forum into the booklet LDS Film Forum, the first academic publication exclusively about Mormon cinema, published by BYU’s Department of Theatre & Media Arts
March 2004 – Wrote, directed, and edited the abstract 3-minute film By Water, and Blood, and the Spirit, a shot-by-shot chiasmus of spiritual rebirth through an LDS baptism, shot in an LDS chapel in London, England
January-October 2004 – Consulted with writer-director Tyler Ford on the script for the feature film Piccadilly Cowboy (later renamed Anxiously Engaged), a romantic comedy about an American Mormon cowboy in London
February 2005 – Worked with BYU’s Harold B. Lee Special Collections Film Curator James D’arc to organize events celebrating the centennial of Mormon cinema, because of the 1905 film A Trip to Salt Lake City (I later discovered the Mormon Rough Rider films, moving the advent of Mormon cinema to 1898)
October 2005 – Presented “Latter-day Saint Cinema,” an overview of the five waves of Mormon film, at the Theater & Media Arts Departmental Forum at Brigham Young University
January 2006 – Presented “Latter-day Saint Cinema Past, Present, and Future” at the LDS Film Forum in the LDS Film Festival in Orem, Utah
January 2006 – Participated in the panel discussion “The Future of LDS Cinema” at the LDS Film Forum in the LDS Film Festival in Orem, Utah
February 2006 – Judged the Association for Mormon Letters Award for Film, citing Annie Poon’s Book of Visions, Tom Russell’s Angie, and Melissa Puente’s Sisterz in Zion
February 2006 – Presented “LDS Cinema and LDS Literature: Kid Brother or Two-Ton Gorilla?,” about the relationship between the two fields, at the 2006 Association for Mormon Letters Conference at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah
March 2006 – Presented “LDS Cinema in Five Waves” at the BYU Studies Academy meeting in Provo, Utah
January-April 2006 – Taught the course Mormon Cinema for the Theatre & Media Arts Department at Brigham Young University, the first college course ever on LDS cinema
September 2004-June 2006 – Served as Film Editor of the Mormon Literature and Creative Arts Database for Brigham Young University, designing the layout, creating cataloging protocols, and contributing the first 2,200 entries from my personal database of Mormon films
January-June 2006 – Worked as the Mormon Media Specialist at the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, working with the Mormon Media Committee, acquiring over 200 DVDs for the media center and Special Collections, forming acquisition guidelines, creating extensive bibliographies and study guides, assisting with other archival material, and creating displays about Mormon film throughout the library
June 2006 – Organized and presented at “Gordon B. Hinckely on Film,” two screening and lecture events about the Church President’s lifelong work with film and media, in Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library theater
June 2006 – Wrote the essay “Out of Obscurity: Improving the Image of the Church,” about Gordon B. Hinckley’s media work, for the events “Gordon B. Hinckley on Film”
August 2006 – Published the article, with co-author Laraine Wilkins, “Propaganda and LDS Church Filmmaking: Gentle Persuasion or Ham-Fisted Handling?” in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film 7:3 (Summer 2006)
August 2006 – Published the article “The Ascension of a Saint: New York Doll” in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film 7:3 (Summer 2006)
July-September 2006 – Worked with Richard and Gwen Dutcher, Eric Samuelsen, Dan Wotherspoon, and John Dehlin to create a Sunstone Film Festival, which was unfortunately unrealized but was revised in the 2010s when I worked with Lindsay Hansen Park and Stephen Carter to create film events at the Sunstone Summer Symposium over multiple years
June-October 2006 – Consulted with director Margaret Blair Young on the feature-length documentary Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons
October 2006 – Published the article “A Glimpse Inside the Last Wagon,” a review of the Fit for the Kingdom documentary Angie, in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film 8:1 (Winter 2006)
November 2006 – Assistant edited the 64-minute musical family film Samuel the Lamanite for the Liken series by Lightstone Pictures
November 2006 – Edited a 60-minute behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the film Samuel the Lamanite for the DVD special features
January 2007 – Screened my short film By Water, and Blood, and the Spirit at the LDS Film Festival in Orem, Utah, where it was included in the Best of Festival program
April 2007 – Published the article “Vampires with Pamphlets,” a review of the 2006 DVD restoration of the 1922 British film Trapped by the Mormons and the 2005 American remake of the same, in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film 8:2 (Spring 2007)
July 2007 – Co-edited with Gideon Burton BYU Studies 46:2 (Summer 2007), a special issue on Mormonism and film, commissioning and editing articles by Terryl Givens, James D’arc, Eric Samuelsen, Sharon Swenson, Travis Anderson, and Tom Lefler
July 2007 – Published, with co-author Gideon Burton, “A History of Mormon Cinema” in BYU Studies 46:2 (Summer 2007), at 36,000 words the longest article ever published in that journal
July 2007 – Reprinted my article “A Glimpse Inside the Last Wagon” in BYU Studies 46:2 (Summer 2007)
August 2007 – Reprinted my article “A Glimpse Inside the Last Wagon” in the online journal BYU Studies Reviews
September 2007 – Published the article “The Eyes of Babes: A Historical Survey of LDS Children’s Media” in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film 9:1 (2007), a special issue about children’s literature and media
February 2006-January 2008 – Served as the Film and Photography Editor for Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film
March 2008 – Received, with Gideon Burton, a Special Award in Criticism from the Association for Mormon Letters for editing BYU Studies 46:2 (Summer 2007)
January-May 2008 – Consulted with founder Claude Bernard on the creation of the Festival du Film Mormon in Brussels, Belgium, the first European LDS film festival
May 2008 – Screened my short film By Water, and Blood, and the Spirit at the Festival du Film Mormon in Brussels, Belgium
September 2008 – Edited the short dance films Light Traces and Expansive to My View for M.E.L.D. Danceworks, run by LDS choreographer Marin Leggat
September 2008 – Published the article “Nephi’s Colored Plates,” about the lost 1915 film The Story of the Book of Mormon and the recent discovery of glass stereopticon slides of its scenes, in Glimpses: The Online Newsletter of the Mormon Artists Group
October 2008 – Published the poem “Fifth-Floor Walkup,” about finding spirituality in New York City, in BYU Studies 42:3 (Fall 2008)
November 2008 – Edited interstitial material for the 76-minute documentary Reserved to Fight by Chantelle Squires about PTSD in a primarily LDS group of Iraq War veterans
December 2008 – Screened my short film By Water, and Blood, and the Spirit at the Lingos Film Festival, an LDS film festival, in New York City
February 2009 – Published the article “Mormon Cinema on the Web” in BYU Studies 48:1 (Spring 2009)
May 2009 – Exhibited my short film By Water, and Blood, and the Spirit and other video art at the Mormon Arts Festival in New York City
May 2009 – Presented in the panel discussion “LDS Perspectives on the Arts” at the Mormon Arts Festival in New York City
June 2009 – Published the article “Flood in the Desert,” a review of the documentary Desert Bayou about Hurricane Katrina evacuess in Utah, in Sunstone magazine #154 (May 2009)
September 2009 – Published the poem “Etching,” about finding meaning in the scriptures, in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 42:3 (Fall 2009)
December 2009 – Published the article “What Is Mormon Cinema?: Defining the Genre” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 42:4 (Winter 2009)
March 2010 – Published the article “Mormons and Film,” an overview of the field for a general audience, in the religious news site Patheos.com
March 2010 – Received notice that my article, with Gideon Burton, “A History of Mormon Cinema” was named by BYU Studies’ editors as one of the ten best articles ever published in its fifty-year history
April 2010 – Edited Mormon Artist magazine issue no. 9, a special issue about LDS artists in New York City, writing the introduction and editing interviews with Kent Christensen, Annie & Kah Leong Poon, Marin Leggat, Nathan Bowen, Erik Orton, and Scott Reynolds, with photography by Natasha Layne Brien and Zack Taylor
April 2010 – Conducted and published an interview with author and Mormon art organizer Glen Nelson in Mormon Artist no. 9
April 2010 – Conducted and published an interview with illustrator Brett Helquist (A Series of Unfortunate Events) in Mormon Artist no. 9
April 2010 – Conducted and published an interview with painter Samuel Evenen in Mormon Artist no. 9
October 2010 – Wrote, directed, and edited the 3-minute film Jekyll & Hyde, a split-screen exploration of dual personalities, with LDS collaborators Stephen Winston and James Ransom, and starring LDS actor Ryan Wood
November 2010 – Presented “The World through a Veil: A Phenomenology of Mormon Film,” about how LDS doctrine could influence our view of ontology and film spectatorship, at the Mormon Media Studies Symposium at Brigham Young University
November 2010 – Chaired the panel discussion “Digital Distribution and the Future of Mormon Film,” about online video and interactive technologies like transmedia at the Mormon Media Studies Symposium at Brigham Young University
November 2010 – Chaired the panel discussion “Preserving Audiovisual Mormon Media,” about problems archiving films, slides, and videos and coordinating between archival institutions, at the Mormon Media Studies Symposium at Brigham Young University
April 2011 – Published the article “Mormonism Goes Mainstream,” a review of the book Peculiar Portrayals: Mormons on the Page, Stage, and Screen in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 44:1 (Spring 2011)
June 2011 – Consulted on postproduction of the 51-minute documentary Bushed: Teaching Life in Alaska by Stephen Carter about a white LDS couple teaching at an Inuit bush school in Shishmaref, Alaska
November 2011 – Shot, edited, and translated into Spanish four nonfiction films for the project Parents Making a Difference, explaining the New York City high school application process, for the LDS activist Brian Davis
January 2012 – Created an online professional networking website for LDS filmmakers
March 2012 – Edited three episodes of the comic web series Math Warriors, about the Yale math team competing against Harvard, by the LDS filmmaker Kristina Harris
April 2012 – Published the article “The Truth Will Set You Free,” a review of Errol Morris’s documentary Tabloid about the British “Manacled Mormon” case, in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 45:1 (Spring 2012)
September 2010-September 2012 – Ran the blog “Notes of a Mormon Filmmaker,” about events in LDS film and my own perspective on other aspects of filmmaking
September 2012 – Published the article “Why I’m a Mormon and Support President Obama: The Long View” for MormonsforObama.org
September 2012 – Published the article “Why I’m a Mormon and Support President Obama: Measuring the Man” for MormonsforObama.org
September-October 2012 – Worked with Gabe Klinger at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to create a Mormon film series there or at the Rotterdam Film Festival, projects which were unfortunately unrealized
October 2012 – Published the article “Why I’m a Mormon and Support President Obama: Foreign Policy” for MormonsforObama.org
October 2012 – Published the article “Why I’m a Mormon and Support President Obama: Economics” for MormonsforObama.org
October 2012 – Published the article “Why I’m a Mormon and Support President Obama: Social Issues” for MormonsforObama.org
November 2012 – Published the article “Why I’m a Mormon and Support President Obama: The Environment” for MormonsforObama.org
December 2012 – Published the chapter “Mormons and Cinema” in the two-volume book series Mormons and Popular Culture from Praeger, edited by J. Michael Hunter
March 2013 – Published the article “Five Questions with Orc Wars Director Kohl Glass,” about a group of LDS filmmakers making fantasy films in Utah, in Filmmaker magazine online
May 2013 – Published the article “On Being a Cult Filmmaker: An Interview with Trent Harris,” the director of The Beaver Trilogy and Plan 10 from Outer Space, in Filmmaker magazine online
May 2013 – Published the article “Richard Dutcher on Project 23 and The Boys at the Bar” in Filmmaker magazine online
July 2013 – Published the article “Five Questions with Man from Reno Director Dave Boyle,” about the LDS director’s latest film, in Filmmaker magazine online
August-December 2013 – Worked with John Dehlin to create a monthly podcast series for Mormon Stories to focus exclusively on art and artists, which was unfortunately unrealized
October 2013-March 2014 – Wrote scripts for and consulted with writer-directors Andrea and Adam Daveline on their comic web series Molly Mo, about a naïve Mormon transplant to New York City, which was unfortunately unproduced
March 2014 – Shot the music video Our First Lady is Cool for the LDS folk musician Arthur Sherry
March 2014 – Published the article “The Book of Lone Peak: Distributing and Marketing the Short Film,” on a documentary about the primarily LDS basketball team at Lone Peak High School in Highland, Utah, in Filmmaker magazine online
February 2012-June 2014 – Consulted with director Xan Aranda on her feature-length autobiographical documentary Mormon Movie, which was unfortunately unproduced
July 2014 – Directed and curated the two-day Blooming Arts Festival, a festival held in the Inwood LDS meetinghouse in New York City as part of the annual Uptown Arts Stroll from the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, including curating and installing over 100 visual artworks—including two commissioned onsite installations—and programming twenty musical and dramatic performances, leading a team of twenty LDS volunteers with artwork from both LDS and other community members
July 2014 – Chaired a screening of Nandan Rao’s feature narrative film Hawaiian Punch and a panel discussion about the attrition of young adult Church members at the Sunstone Summer Symposium at the University of Utah
July 2014 – Presented in the panel discussion “Movies Most Mormon: One Rated G, One Rated R” at the Sunstone Summer Symposium at the University of Utah
August 2014 – Chaired a screening and panel discussion with the director and subjects of the short documentary Transmormon, about a transgender LDS woman in Orem, Utah, at the Sunstone Summer Symposium at the University of Utah
August 2014 – Chaired a screening and panel discussion with the filmmakers of the 1985 feature-length documentary Faith of an Observer: Conversations with Hugh Nibley at the Sunstone Summer Symposium at the University of Utah
August 2014 – Chaired a screening and panel discussion with the filmmakers of the web/TV series pilot Called to Serve, about LDS missionaries in Los Angeles, at the Sunstone Summer Symposium at the University of Utah
May 2014-July 2015 – Consulted with director Cindy Reid, with the intent to work as the editor, on her feature-length documentary Ordain Women, about Kate Kelly and the Ordain Women movement, which was unfortunately unproduced
September 2015 – Published the article “Solving Crimes by Night, Fixing Septic Tanks by Day: Scott Christopherson & Brad Barber on Peace Officer,” on their feature documentary about a retired LDS police officer and current activist against police militarization, in Filmmaker magazine online
February 2016 – Presented in the podcast episode “Mormons at the Movies: A Discussion About Film, Ratings, and Adult Media Consumption,” with other panel members, for the RationalFaiths.com podcast
August 2016 – Published the article “Poly-wood! Mormon Polygamy in the Movies” in Sunstone magazine #181 (Summer 2016)
April 2017 – Published the article “Tribeca 2017: Five Questions with No Man’s Land Director David Byars,” about his documentary on the standoff between a Mormon-led militia and the federal government at the Malheur National Wildlife Sanctuary in Oregon, in Filmmaker magazine online
May 2014-June 2017 – Directed and programmed all film screenings and related events each year at the annual Sunstone Summer Symposium in Salt Lake City, in coordination with Lindsay Hansen Park and Stephen Carter
June 2018 – Published the book Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952 through the Mormon Arts Center, the first comprehensive single-author history of Mormon film
June 2018 – Presented “Mormon Cinema and the Mormon Image: Origins to the 1940s” at the Mormon Arts Center Festival at Columbia University in New York City
July 2018 – Presented as the sole interviewee in the podcast episode “The Extraordinary History of Mormon Cinema with Randy Astle” with host Glen Nelson for the Mormon Arts Center Podcast
March 2019 – Received the Association for Mormon Letters Award for Criticism for my book Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952
June 2019 – Chaired a screening and panel discussion with the filmmakers for “The Tenth Anniversary of the book of jer3miah,” a transmedia web series created at BYU, for the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts Festival in New York City
December 2022 – Published the article “Lands Before Time: Plan of Salvation Typology in the Films of Don Bluth” in Irreantum 19:4 (Winter 2022)
April 2023 – Nominated for the Association for Mormon Letters Award for Criticism (Short-form) for my article “Lands Before Time: Plan of Salvation Typology in the Films of Don Bluth”
June 2023 – Received the B.H. Roberts Foundation Research Grant from the B.H. Roberts Foundation and the Mormon History Association to study Mormon cinema since 1953
January 2024 – Published the article “How Two Silent Films Made Every Member a Missionary,” about the effect of the films Married to a Mormon and Trapped by a Mormon on David O. McKay, in Sunstone Review online
February 2024 – Published the article “The Man in the Hole at General Conference,” about how Frank Wise initiated the filmming of conference sermons, in Sunstone Review online
April 2024 – Published the article “How the Spanish-American War Created the First Mormon Movies” in Sunstone Review online
April 2024 – Published the article “James E. Talmage: Documentarian,” about his early nonfiction stereopticon lectures, in Sunstone Review online
May 2024 – Presented “Bitter Wind: Tracing the Evolving Relationship of White Mormons and Native Peoples in Film” at the Global Mormon Studies Conference at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City
June 2024 – Presented (remotely) “Mormon Film’s Sixth Wave: Digital Cinema and the Shaping of Mormon Identity” at the Mormon History Association Conference in Cleveland, Ohio
September 2024 – Published the chapter “Moving Pictures: Subjectivity and Mormon Identity in Documentary Film” in the book Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader from Oxford University Press, edited by Amanda Beardsley and Mason Kamana Allred
November 2024 – Published the article “Heretic, Humanism, and the Modern Transcendental Mormon Film” in the Association for Mormon Letters blog Dawning of a Brighter Day
March 2025 – Published the article “God’s Army: An Appreciation on Its 25th Anniversary” in the Association for Mormon Letters blog Dawning of a Brighter Day
May 2025 – Presented in the podcast episode “Latter-day Saint Art Episode 8: Film Studies” from Wayfare Magazine Podcast, a conversation with Mason Kamana Allred about Mormon film and our chapters in Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader
June 2025 – Was among the contributors who collectively received the Association for Mormon Letters Award for Criticism for the book Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader