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As you may be aware, the Interpreter Foundation docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon will receive its premiere on Friday, 4 March, as part of the 2022 LDS Film Festival. (You can go here to obtain tickets, if they are still available.) As I’ve mentioned previously, the docudrama features interviews with historians and other experts, both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and nonmembers, and expands its coverage beyond the Three Witnesses, who were the focus of the dramatic film Witnesses, to the Eight Witnesses and the informal or unofficial witnesses. It incorporates dramatic footage from Witnesses, as well as scenes that were created specifically for Undaunted.
Strictly speaking, only approximately ninety minutes of the full, two-part, 2.5-hour (i.e., 150-minute) docudrama will be shown at the premiere. We judged that showing the entire two-and-a-half hour production would simply be too much. It’s our impression that documentaries aren’t typically as easy for audiences to watch for long stretches at a time as narrative, dramatic films are. The docudrama is divided into two parts for a reason; it’s not intended that people watch it all in one setting — although they’re obviously free to do so if the mood is upon them. So what will be screened at the LDS Film Festival is a special director’s cut that Mark Goodman is creating especially for that evening. Both halves of the docudrama are complete, and the special version is intended to give the Festival audience a sense of each of the two segments.
We will also screen one of our “Snippets,” to give an example of the flotilla of short features that we’re creating — roughly a dozen or so have already been created — for broad, free distribution online. And there will be a question-and-answer period with, I believe, Paul Wuthrich (who played Joseph Smith in the Witnesses theatrical film and who hosts Undaunted), Camrey Bagley Fox (Emma Smith in Witnesses, also the host and interviewer in our “Snippets”), Mark Goodman (director), Russell Richins (producer), James Jordan (associate producer), and an aging and rather bizarre groupie who often hangs around with them.
Incidentally, proceeds from ticket sales go to the LDS Film Festival, not to the Interpreter Foundation. By permitting Undaunted to premiere there, the Interpreter Foundation received a certain number of complimentary tickets. And we’ve bought a fair number, as well. This allows us to give them out to Foundation volunteers and donors, but it doesn’t fill the theater. How many other tickets are left at this point, if any, I don’t know. Ticket sales are not our province. If you’re interested, though, and if you haven’t already done so, you should probably secure your tickets as soon as possible.
Some of you, I think, will be interested in a virtual fireside that my friends Mark and Elizabeth Stoddard, of Heart of Russia Cruises, have organized. (See the image directly above.)
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A few days ago, this blog’s vocal resident atheist commentator was demanding that, if God exists, we should be able to show God to him on his demand. Several people, myself included, pointed to him that there are lots and lots of things in science that have not been seen, that perhaps cannot ever be seen, but that are universally acknowledged to exist. In that context, this passage, from the respected Los Angeles Times science write K. C. Cole, seems very apropos to me:
So much of science consists of things we can never see: light “waves” and charged “particles”; magnetic “fields” and gravitational “forces”; quantum “jumps” and electron “orbits.” In fact, none of these phenomena is literally what we say it is. Light waves do not undulate through empty space in the same way that water waves ripple over a still pond; a field is only a mathematical description of the strength and direction of a force; an atom does not literally jump from one quantum state to another, and electrons do not really travel around the atomic nucleus in orbits. The words we use are merely metaphors. “When it comes to atoms,” wrote Niels Bohr, “language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.”
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I confess that I was pleased to see the Los Angeles Rams win the Super Bowl. And not merely because they were my hometown team while I was growing up and have returned to be my hometown team yet again. There were two people, members of the Rams team, in whom I had a particular interest. You may be aware of their backgrounds. But you may not be. So, as a service, I offer the following links:
No Excuses, No Regrets: The Eric Weddle Story
“Rams safety Eric Weddle exceeding expectations ahead of Super Bowl LVI in whirlwind NFL return”
“Where was Eric Weddle before he rejoined the Rams? Winning his first football championship ever”
“How Rams kicker Matt Gay followed faith to Utah native’s first career Super Bowl”
Posted from St. George, Utah
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